The hardest part has yet to come...

Life sans Bluffing It, touring and the slow crushing march to reality...

It has been a few days since the journey has ended. The dust is settling and the scale and motivation of the past few months is rapidly being replaced with the need to become housed and employed. Technically homeless and unemployed in a foreign land. The drama of the written word.

Part of the journey was to seek out the 'New Zealand Smile' (and to fund raise and to see a penguin). With people who have spent time in (not prison time) New Zealand, when you utter the words 'New Zealand', a smile spreads across their face. I have seen this on many faces outside of New Zealand. In England, in Australia, in Indonesia. The faces differ but the smile is always the same. The country leaves a mark on you. You cannot help but smile. A smile that I am now a proud owner of.

A part of me wants to continue. Just keep going, exploring this glorious land, just keep going until my money is spent and the cold renders me useless. All my clothes are built for summer, the sleeping bag is in the same boat and my portable room is struggling. Bike has taken a few hits on the gravel roads but is unrelenting. Truly built for this task. And I had my counts my choice of transport to begin with. Sorry bike! (Yes I named my bike 'bike'). In the same way I had doubts about myself. The panic I felt on the very first night to those horrible bouts of self doubt at the beginning and the terrible pangs of loneliness towards the end to the bouts of paranoia to the dark places I found my mind at points after periods of isolation. And the smell. Always a bad smell lingering from some part of me. A different day, a different smell, a different source. All shit covered obstacles that needed to be dealt with. Oh, there was that brief period of time that I was convinced that I was not in full control of my bladder, that something important had been damaged. In the the end it wasn't or I've gone past not noticing. Towards the end, any care to my appearance had completely vanished, replaced by an utilitarian approach to clothing. Aesthetics became a foreign concept, as did fresh clean clothes.

Have noticed that there seems to be a disparity between the signs in Cape Reinga and Bluff. The sign pointing to Bluff reads 1456km whilst the sign pointing to Cape Reinga reads 1401km! Did NZ shrink? Has the crow found a quicker, more direct way? These questions are more pressing than any of those humdrum questions of 'What now?' and 'What am I going to do with myself?'

Distance wise, to put 4797km into perspective, as the crow flies from London, I could have cycled to Canada, Chad or Kazakhstan or from West to East in the US. Just saying.

Compared to other adventures of past, this one has been really uneventful. No run ins with drug dealers, no death threats, no near muggings at knife point, no finding love, no attempted coups, no hospital visits...then I realize, that of all the silly situations I have found myself in, this one trumps them all. Who the fuck decides that trying to run an international fundraising campaign from the back of a bicycle with no experience nor any experience of touring is 'uneventful'? That is one of the drawbacks of spending so much time alone, you find out hard to put things into perspective. There is no yard stick to measure achievements, just you and the bike. The bike doesn't know any better nor has any context to work with.

Physically I have changed. All my clothes now look too big on me. The T-shirts in the photos are a small and they now hang off me. My appetite is never appeased, people seem shocked at the quantity of food that I can consume now. Always hungry. My fitness is at crazy levels at the moment, I went for, what was intended as a small ride turned into a 75km ride. The effects of which were not even felt the next day. Mentally wise, in places, I'm stronger there. I will take on any challenge with conviction and stubbornness. Although there are still some challenges out there that still seem impossible to me. Rejection is a terrible fear and one that I need to destroy.

With gravel roads for those in motorized vehicles, top tip, if you see a person walking, a cyclist, people on horses or etc, slow the fuck down when passing! We don't have that protective veneer of metal to protect us from loose stones!

Still the hardest part was the 90 Mile Beach, in terms of cycling but the hardest part of the whole journey was the fundraising. Trying to keep everything updated, the numerous technological clusterfucks that littered the way was stressful. To the point of nearly quitting the whole fundraising side of things. I don't think the bike ride pulled in any funds but Portraits By Strangers did. You can visit the Portraits by Strangers page by heading over to www.facebook.com/portraitsbystrangers This will be ongoing and still open to donations and submissions. 

I would mention the best parts of the adventure here, but that would take up pages and pages. Everyday, the top moments of the journey changes. So to name the top moments would be impossible for me (indecision is a trait I still have not manged to overcome!) but no worries, just go back through the blog to get a rough idea. All the good and bad of the journey are apart of me and shall remain with me for as long as my mind holds out. This will not be the last journey of its kind, there will be more! Estonia to Turkey anyone?

If you are thinking of doing a fund raising campaign and need advice, just give us a shout. I can tell you the many ways of how not to do things. That I can truly say I am expert at!