The end and therefore the beginning
Trip Start
Oct 27, 2009
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Trip End
Nov 27, 2009
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Sunday, December 27, 2009
So that’s it.
Game over
Please come in, your time is up.
1,000's of kilometre’s travelled
1,000s of photo’s taken
Hundreds of people met
407 Days,
in one AMAZING COUNTRY!!
but all good things end and today at 6.45am I left New Zealand.
So no more L&P, no more ‘choice’ or ‘sweet as’, no more being able to bike down the main highway.
It’s good buy to the tractors, campervans, Subaru’s and hoons.
Good bye to chooks, southern men and ‘home kills’.
Good buy to the warehouse, where everyone gets a bargain and brisquoes, you’ll never buy better, tip top ice cream and NZ beef and lamb, which makes you grow like a runaway train.
I can't pay buy eftpos any more, I closed my account, I do now have a NZ driving license but no where in NZ left to drive.
As you most know what I did do, I’ll start with what do I regret not doing:
* Not working on a sheep farm
* Not joining a commune, hippie style
* Not getting thin - people told me cyclists loose loads of weight - not if they eat fish and chips, as much as me - I DO NOT regret the fish and chips.
* Not keeping in touch better with some people I met/some people at home.
* No learning to ski or snow board
* Not doing more tramping and staying in huts.
* Not running over a possum, as I’m always keen to do my bit for conservation. Though clearly only with the car as running over one with the bike would have been scary and probably the last thing I ever did.
What do I not regret
* Almost everything I’ve done in the last 407 days!!
Esp. Every kilometre cycled!
So if you do the math on days and hours, well what I really regret is not having more hours in every day, more minutes in every hour and extra time that didn’t take longer to happen, so I
could have squeezed more into 407 days, added stuff but taken nothing away.
All good things begin as well,
the next adventure is beginning. The time to move on has come, I’m off to Ozzie. Australia, I’m crossing the ditch!
To meet Steph, to see if I can survive the heat, to not get bitten bye anything deadly, to stroll on perfect beaches, to surf in the sea, to drink beer on the Bondi beach on Xmas day in Sydney.
So although I am sad to say it is over, it is time to embrace the next phase. So here I am in Brisbane, it’s hot, I’m hot and busy there are roads and people here the likes of which I’ve not seen outside Auckland for 407 days.
Steph gets here in two days! I wonder how much she has changed, I wonder how much she thinks I have? I also wonder what we might see, what we are going to do and if I can really survive this heat.
All I can say is ‘God bless air con, shit for the planet, great for me!’
