I'm always impressed by the camarderie of cyclists and I've met a few folk who have helped me out in the past with advice or offers to help fix a puncture, etc. So I always try to pass on this goodwill.
Anyhow bumped into this bloke yesterday when I was cycling home, kitted out on a quality road bike, but with a slighty bigger pack than usual. As I look like a tourer with my commuter set up, panniers and the like, he asked me where I was headed and I said just up the road to Puk Bay. Anyway we chugged along and got talking/yelling due to the wind.
Turns out he was cycling from Christchurch to Whanganui! Averaging around 184km a day he'd left Welly earlier.
At around 08:30 he was hoping to get to Bulls at around 11:00. With the wind blowing a northerly over 30km, I said he'd be very lucky to get to Levin, (I actually reckoned more likely Otaki as I've done this a few times but I didn't want to dishearten him).
Anyhow he's planning on designing a NZ cycling website/data base that features cyclists from all over NZ contributing to it and grabbed my mob number, he also said he'd update me on his progress.
I took him through Puk Bay as the road is tricky, and told him about the shitty roads through Kapiti and the horrors of the Foxton Straight when it's windy as he'd never cycled through Wellington, Kapiti and Manawatu before.
Made Otaki by 11:30. (I was right). Finally got to Whanganui at 17:15, which is not great but in that wind it would have been shitty all the way to Sanson.
Re: Foxton Straight
"Jesus mate. Pushing along at 22-25km was terrible" - lol
He's preparing for the Nationals and for a youngster, (he's still at uni), these long slogs mentally really put you in the right place.
He was amazed at what we Welly cyclists put up with when it gets windy. To me it was a slightly worse than average day for cycling but nothing special, he just couldn't get how bad it was.