Trapped In A Tin Can.

Day 10. The Great (Disastrous) Escape.

Auckland to Pukehawa.
Daily total: 46.2km Running total: 498.5km Train Distance: 43km Bike Costs: $55

Back on the road and the adventure South begins. Second pannier purchased and now I'm a balanced cyclist. Did learn the immediate lesson of, like food shopping, don't pack your food supplies whilst hungry! Way too food goods to start off with. Swung by the bike shop to replace my depleted brake pads. In my laziness and rush to get to the train station, I got the bike shop people to help with the brake pads. Not the thing you wan to sort in a hurry and they did not charge for the labour! Sound as. All is good. New brakes, sunny day. What more can you ask for?

The Train...trains are quick, so that's good and I avoided the horrible part of the journey that I have been warned about by so many people. Once in motion trains are hard to escape. This was the beginning of the disastrous day. In my little bubble at the back of the train, another dweller at the back of the train near me, singles me out (not hard when there is no one else about) and engages the innocent beginnings of conversation. 'Where you're heading?' 'Where you're from?' You know, stock questions. Nothing to worry about...mention he is an Evangelical Pastor...then the spill starts. How Jesus has helped him and how it has helped others...I can live with that...but his belief was very intense and all attempts to have a non-religious conversation were blindsided. There was no room for any other type of conversation in his world.  Also he had some very confusing views on Darwinism. His argument for Darwinism not existing was based on the question 'Have you ever seen a broken watch repair itself?' That such a complex mechanism cannot build itself means that Darwinism is flawed...but Darwinism is based on living organisms and not man made objects...yep I had more chance of screaming that out in a vacuum of space and someone hearing it, than have matey take notice if what I said. Everything I said was greeted by a brick wall. No reasonable debate, just 'I am going to just ignore everything you said and carry on with my thing'. I swear if I had started making up words and using random sounds, he would not have noticed. Even the tactic of steering out the window had no effect. So glad my subtle hints of needing a place to stay earlier on in the conversation went unheard/ignored. The train pulls up to my stop. Doors open. Escape. Looking back, I think he may have been a robot stuck on a loop.

Minutes down the road, my back brake pads come loose...my shout for not double checking my shabby attempt at replacing the brake pads I was in charge of. Way further down the road, my knee starts playing up. Even further down the road the Odometer starts playing up. Still further down the road, puncture! The first one. Although a complete write off. Fix one hole, find another. Luckily, only 500m from the hostel but on a gravel road. To top it all off, the terrible view at the hostel. 

Some of the sights that I had to deal with.

 


The terrible view. What a way to end the day. Endless countryside on a sunny day. And I had to wake up to this.

  
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