Day 1 – Yeah but it doesn’t have the fucking tow bar we asked for!

Jack Daniels Remaining: 1 litre.
Kilometers Covered: 0.5km (test ride)

Standard rendezvous at the airport – 5 bike boxes + a 6^th containing the bike rack, the fellowship was formed at an appropriate pre-lunchtime watering hole at Sydney airport (yeah, a coffee shop). Duty free Jack Daniels sorted. 1 litre remains….

…A note on packing ones bike in a box.

One of the most shitty annoying, frustrating, painstaking asshole of a jobs known to man – just above removing the lint from the lint collector in a dryer but just below cleaning up cockroach guts after a successful slaying. I hated it. Nuff said. Shut up.

The unfortunate highlight of the day would have to have been the discovery (or lack thereof) of a tow bar on the 12 seater van we hired (AT HALF PRICE – thank you Sam) for the trip. This is despite the fact that we asked repeated if it had one. What was more annoying was not the fact that we couldn’t use a bike rack for the trip, but we would have to somehow lug the thing round with us for the trip. And I am not talking about you standard bike rack. It was one of these MOFO’s (yes, big and annoying).

Coupled with aggravating a back injury in unloading his bike, Shawn took the news particularly badly and is the unfortunate winner of the “first to lose his shit” award.

As we would learn though, this setback would lead the 6 of us to being the masters of “Bangbus Tetris”. Packing 6 fully built bikes, 6 fully built boys with luggage, 6 bike boxes and yes one annoying… fucking… bike rack into the van was no easy feat. But we pulled it off in spectacular style and while not admitting to it, each of us carried a quiet air of contentment on the achievement.

Attempting to load 6 large boxes and boys into the van....

First night’s accommodation in Christchurch was really nice, a quaint establishment just across the part from Chirstchurch CBD… Then this happened on its lawn:

Bikes reassembled (well 99.998% assembled – Richard’s seat post clamp went AWOL), we did what 6 Aussie boys on a trip do best. We went to the bar. I reacquainted myself with what I believe is NZ’s finest beer and I am willing to say in my top 5 beers ever – Speights.

This is a photo of poppies taken at the hotel...

Poppies are nice and these help to convey to you what a fine establishment this was. It was the sort of place you would take a lady after a classy night out. Giggitty Giggitty!

After a quick beer we headed for the CBD for a meal “across the park”. Our accommodation was on the opposite side of the CBD – to get to the CBD we had to traverse Hagley Park. It was one of those instances where it looks much smaller on the map than it is in real life. To put in in perspective, we crossed a few football fields and a gold course. Once in the CBD, it took even longer to find somewhere to eat. In fact, once we found somewhere, Richard had had enough and walked back – the meal we found was ok, but certainly not worth the 45mins odd of walking to get there.