Closed Campsites and beer gardens...

Day 11. Strangers Are Great!

Pukehawa to Waingaro.
Daily total: 58.5km Running total: 557km
New top speed: 65.41kmph

A new day a new start. Not optimistic about the journey. Especially after the various breakages of yesterday and the terrible, terrible view. Overcast start and then the drizzle. Drizzle is actually good. Nice and cooling. Everything is tacked away in waterproof bags, who cares? Also, out of phone service. Again, cut off from the outside world.


So terrible, I had to show it again (also no photos from the day. Something needs to fill the space!)

From the hostel, there were no shops or basically anything that I could spend money on. Just hills and farmland. Not a single person, just the odd car passing here and there, until the final few hours where the cars disappeared, even the cows and sheep vanished. I would get the odd waft of them, but never a visual. Just hills, farmland and an empty road to keep me company.

In the final 10km, the knee starts up again. Damn you knee. Don't I give you enough attention? I with you all the time. I take you everywhere I go. Why treat me like this? In the drizzle I see a B&B sign. I stop in their drive, a cheeky notion of knocking on their door to see if I could camp there. Then it comes back to me, I looked at their website and staying there was way, way out of my price league and way to classy to take in strays. Anyways, the campsite was a little bit further. My decision pays off, the campsite, the campsite who responded to my email a few days before has a pub next door with hot food! The dinner the day before was a bowl of plain spaghetti. Dark days followed by happy days.

Get to the campsite in the rain. They are closed! No ifs, no buts. Just closed. They won't budge and let me stay. Disaster! The next closest campsite was 30km away...pub! Beer! Reassessment beer and hot food! Explained my dilemma to the landlord and then joked about camping in the beer garden. The good, good man agreed. This is a proper local pub in the countryside. Mainly farmers and sheep shearers and other country type jobs that us city folk would be confused about.

Ate a hefty amount of food and sat at the back of the pub in the midst of a potatoe mong. Massive gut busting portions. Start chatting to a couple, Grace and Patrick. Turns out they were the owners of the Foxgloves B&B I stopped in the drive of. I told them of me copping out of knocking their door because I saw their classy looking place on the internet. They said that I could stay at their place, Foxgloves B&B was empty that night and that it was pissing it down with rain. They made a very convincing argument! So my night went from a tent in a rainy beer garden to a deluxe room with a king sized bed with more pillows that you could shake a stick at. I ended up leaving all my stuff on the en-suite bathroom floor because I did not want to dirty up the carpet.

The people of Waingaro are amazing. From Lloyd and Mary at the Waingaro Hotel to the locals at the bar to Grace and Patrick at Foxgloves B&B. Thanks so much for all the hospitality. All the pessimism from the day before and that morning had been washed away. Bring on the rest of the trip! 

The view from Foxgloves B&B.

My room for the night. Much nicer than a tent!

A terrible life I lead sometimes.

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word!

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.

  
Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word! 

The digital highway is surprisingly tiring.

The great catch up is over, in one sense anyway. After days of melting my brain with the logistical conundrum of allowing donations to three different charities, registered in three different countries on three different continents, I have finally pulled all the different, conflicting pieces to create something that makes sense and makes the most out of everyone's donations! 

If there is an easy way or a hard way to do something, I will always seem to find the most difficult route. Not content with just sticking with one cause, I thought I'd make life easier by tacking on another 2 good causes. 

Give me a choice between repeating the last few days consistently sat in front of a laptop, trawling through pages of words and grueling hills, camping, living off worse than students food. I go with the second option every time...as long a sits sunny, overcast or drizzle. I cannot say anything about the pouring, driving, angry rain. So I cannot invite it to the favourable conditions party yet. The invite is in the post. Honest. 

So back on the road tomorrow, after, what feels like an eternity. This will be the first time for me going south of Auckland! Yet, before the proper journey starts, I am catching a train from the center of Auckland to Pukekohe. I know what you are thinking. A train? Boo to you (that's you booing me, not me booing you. That would just be rude), you dirty cheat. Well, yes its cheating...a bit but after discussing routes with many people who have toured a lot around NZ and they all said 'Get the train'. Industrial areas, heavy traffic, narrow roads, accidents, blah, blah, blah, general shite riding. So train. 43km of train. 43km to make up elsewhere...well techically 13km, as there was the 30km detour. But hay, whose counting anyway? Did I mention that I've done 452.3km so far? Oh yeah, I'm counting, thats who. 

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word! 

ET had an easier time with phones...

Day 9. Auckland bound.

Helensville to Auckland.
Daily total: 42.81km Running total: 452.3km

Auckland in the distance.

Considering the intensity of the previous day, the body was reacting pretty well to being back on the bike. Much prefer the hills to 90 Mile Beach. The beach was hard as the scenery did not vary too much whereas hills, the scenery changes. There is the chance to escape the head winds. 

Within 20km of Auckland 8 of my gears decide to give out. Another thing to add to the list of things I need to complete once I hit Auckland. 

Lunch was spent outside of a bakery with the Ozzies. If it were not for the bikes, we would have easily been mistaken as vagrants. We parted ways in west Auckland. Now it is time to catch up with the digital, internet based side of Bluffing It.

Day 8. The boat to Helensville.

Trounson Campground to Helensville.
Daily total: 115.39km Running total: 409.49km

The view on the way to Dargaville.

As always, plans change. A degree of flexibility is required. The plan was the internet catch up and regain phone coverage in Dargaville then along the Missing Link to Purto the next day to get a ride on a fishing boat. 

The boat and catch up with the Ozzies from the day before required phone coverage. Phone coverage that I have not had for days. In theory Dargaville was to provide this. In reality, my phone decided to reject any form of network coverage. Trying to make a phone call was an exercise in futility. Numerous Sims were tried. Payphones sought. Payphones found. Payphones that did not do cash. Payphones that took phone cards. Shops sell phone cards. But not the first one I went into. Why would it sell phone cards, despite the phone box sitting right by it's front door? Shop two-no phone cards. Try shop three. No success. Shop 3 said to try shop 2. I informed shop 3 that shop 2 sent me them. I asked how people make phone calls using the public phones...with a phone card was the answer...where do I get a phone card?...don't know. Arg. Surrounded by phones with no way of using them. If ET could use a bloody speak and spell to contact space, surely there would be a chance for me. Just one phone call. A phone call that required a new Sim and top up. A $26 phone call. $26 and 3 hours of my time to make one call to someone who turned out to be one minute down the road.

I caught up with the Ozzies. Turns out there was a chance of getting the boat that day.
So I joined them and headed towards Purto, to be closer to the fishing boat. We get a call around 3.30pm confirming that we could catch the ferry that day around 6.30pm. That gave us 3 hours to cover about 35km. If we missed the boat, it would be a days wait until the next boat. Time would be tight. The terrain went crazy. Hills that went on forever that were followed by very short down hill sections before hitting more up, steep hill. Then to make things more fun, the smooth tarmac for the last 25km was replaced with unsealed gravel roads. With bonus hills thrown in for shits and giggles. Big, gravelly, hilly roads. The whole way to the end of the peninsular. I have never ridden so hard or for so long or with such intensity for so long in my whole life. I was getting weaker with every up hill that passed. Coming off the bike on the downhills at those speeds would have been bone producing. We get to the beach a little late. No boat. Theres a message, the boat will be a bit late. Boom. Happy days.

The boat does the boat equivalent of 'pulling up'. We are greeted by Rod, the captain of the boat, with his magnificent seafarers beard. We are loaded on to the boat and treated to the most amazing cup of tea ever. The race to the boat was brutal. I was destroyed. We sailed across the Kaipara Habour. The largest natural harbour in the Southern hemisphere. 
 

Sun set over the harbour.

View from the boat.

Rod and his wife Shelly were amazing. They feed us dinner, put us up for the night. If you are ever doing the Missing Link yourselves or want to charter a fishing boat, give these guys a call, they are great people. Shamrock Charters Kaipara Ph: 09 420 7061 or Mob: 027 568 2447. Seriously, they are boss. 

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word! 

Go do one bungee cords!

Day 7. Big hills, big trees.

Opononi to Trounson Campground.
Daily total: 52.91km Running total: 294.10km

Chaotic start to the day. Grand plans of leaving at 8am but the rain had plans otherwise. So close to calling a rain day. Then the bungee cords. I hate you bungee cords. Proper hate you. I'm going to replace you with string! Yeah. That's right. String. I have some guide rope string I have found. Its no threat. No more of your elasticated shenanigans for me! Also, curse you hill outside of Omapere, no way are you 110m long, curse you false expectations. The rain did not help at that point. Despite the rainy start, my first rain day turned out well. It provided a change to the unrelenting sun of the past few days.

The two remaining rolls I brought to sustain me at the beginning of the journey have started to grow mold. So I ate one and threw the other one away, thus reducing my chances of getting ill by 50%! Go maths! Today the pate roll was taking to the next culinary level with the addition of value ham.

Te Matua Ngahere

The hills leading through the Waipoua Forest are long.  Very long but a good ride once you establish a good pace and the down hills are insanely fun. There was a lot of wooping on the way down. In the Waipoua Forest is the Te Matua Ngahere tree. This Kauri Tree is estimated to be around 2000 years old.

Going up one of the hills I met a couple of Ozzies heading in the same direction towards the Missing Link Cycle Route. It was good to have a bit of company on the route. Especially as all the other cyclists I came across have been heading North towards Cape Reinga.

My shoes are horrific. The smell is offensive, only fire can cure them. I swear the smell is becoming ingrained into my physical being. I may have to burn my feet at the end of all this.  

Am I the one being cautioned or the Kiwi?

Turns out the campsite I was staying at holds the title of second most likely place to spot a Kiwi in the wild. Once the sun was bored of doing it's duties I headed off in to the woods with a random from the campsite to go us some Kiwi. To maximize your chances of spotting one, you need a torch with a red filter, they are less freaked out by the light and it is better for their nocturnal eyes. And being quiet. We had none of the above. If you want to know how not to find a Kiwi, I am man to ask!

On top of the hills.

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word!

Flat is a relative concept.

Day 6. Sunshine. Cider.
Rawene to Opinoni.
Daily total: 22.22km Running total: 241.19km 

Woke up to the view across the habour completely obscured by the morning fog. You could feel the sun trying to punch it's way through the thick haze.

Waiting at the ferry morning view.

Morning view.

Just missed the ferry, so spent the hour waiting for the next ferry showing the little Mauri kid from my lift to the ferry how to use my digital camera. 

The kid takes not a shabby photo.

Short day on the road to Opinoni. Big distance planned for tomorrow through the Waipoua Forest which I have been told has some big old hills going on. Had to contend with some long steep hills. Hills lined with skinned animals drying in the sun on barbed wire fences. 

Campsite view at Opononi.

 

Country, cider and sun.

Opononi was a quiet little place. Sandy beaches. Spent part of the afternoon, chilling in the sun with some cider as a country and western band played on in the background whilst the old folk of the town busted out their line dancing moves on the dance floor. Night rolled round and I went to sleep. 

Sun set at Opononi.

Day 5. Hills, hills, hills.
Ahipara to Rawene.
Daily total: 69.7km Running total: 218.97km Boat total: 2km

Feeling ready for the next leg of the journey. Been told that the proposed route is pretty flat. My idea of pretty flat is radically different to the Kiwi of pretty flat. A route littered with hills. But then, where ever there is an uphill, there is almost certainly a downhill at some point. 

The forests mark a nice contrast to the shadeless expanses of 90 Mile Beach. Groupings of forest offering a pine tinted rest bite from the omnipresent sun. Despite lower temperatures compared to places like the Philippines, the sun is brutal in NZ due to the depleted ozone layer. 

Tea break.

 
After one of the breaks in the forest I found a random old Dutch couple just chilling in a bush by the side of the road. Instinct telling me that if you find someone hanging out in a bush, go talk to them. Or was don't talk to the bush dwellers? I had stopped, so no choice in the matter. They had cups of tea on the go. How can not trust someone when they have tea on tap? They were heading North from Auckland. In their time, they had cycled all round Europe, including over the Pyrenees but they said that nothing had prepared them for the hills of New Zealand. 

On the road to Kohukohu.

I made good time to Kohukohu so decided to plough on through to Opononi which required a ferry across the water. Started chatting to random on the boat and before the end of the 2km ferry ride I found myself agreeing to join them to a random gathering. 

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word! 

Hot dinners are more boss than Bruce Springsteen at a boss convention.

Day 4. Sweet, sweet FA.
Ahipara to nowhere in particular.
Daily total: 0km Running total: 149.27km

An exciting day of sorting the bike and dossing around on the beach.

Day 3.  The concept of rest day needs explaining to me...  
Waipapakauri to Ahipara
Daily total: 50.78km Running total: 149.27km

The final burn before 'rest' day.

Despite going to bed a broken man with the fear of severely limited mobility, I woke up surprisingly nimble. Just a short ride along the remainder of the beach to the next town before a well deserved rest stop. I am not wanting to go breaking myself this early in the game.  

I thought my body would totally reject the bike today after all the leg cramping of the day before. I think bribing my body with the promise of a lazy day helped. Haha, you fool body, you absolute fool. You should have known better than to listen to me! What I forgot to inform body about was the trip to the next town to score some food for cooking. The next town being the 15km away in Kaitaia with little around that resembles public transport. So back on the bike.

So much for the grand ambition of chilling out the whole day, although did consume a devastatingly large portion of chips. Small portion my (soon to be lard) arse!

Got on the cooking mission later on in the evening. How good are hot dinners? Proper good and way better than a witty analogy that disses salad. I had been living off Farmhouse pate rolls for the last couple of meals and I had exhausted all possible bread/pate permutations within one roll.

Working out the subtler mechanics of bungee cords. If you use them in a rush, they will punish you for your shabby timekeeping by wrapping themselves up in each other in some form of bungee cord orgy. Rest day tomorrow is needed. No human should be thinkng about slithering bungee cords in such details.

The endless beach.

Day 2.  Short lived easy beginnings.  
Tapotupotu to Waipapakauri
Daily total: 92.43km Running total: 98.49km
Top speed record set: 63.3kmph 

The view that greeted me at the start of the day at Tapotupotu. Rubbish.

Why did I run up the massive sand dune twice to go sand boarding? Why did I go for a big walk at the campsite? Why was it so difficult for me to just sit about and enjoy the sun and watch the sea? Why? Why? No point worrying, as there was a whole days worth of cycling to be had.

Anyways, today was to day for the 90 Mile Beach rematch. It had been nearly a year since I was last there. It was not a success.

Last year. The antithesis of success.

Today the beach was to be conquered. At low tide, 90 Mile Beach is a highway that follows the rules of the road. Theoretically, you can get fined for not wearing a bicycle helmet (turns out the helmet proved to be a good sun visor...I digress). Despite being called 90 Mile Beach, it is not 90 miles long. it is around 56 miles. No one seems to know how the beach got it's name. Its long and has flat compacted sand which makes it suitable to drive on. Providing that you have a suitable vehicle for the job. Which a bicycle is, sort of but not when compared to a 4X4.  

Danger. Slow is bad. Speed up.

The day was hot and was getting hotter. It was going to be a long ride. I presumed that is was going to be an easy ride, no hills, flat straight surface. Just sunshine and tunes. I spent the entirety of the beach cycling against a head wind. The shadeless beach with the sun beating down continuously. You look ahead in to the distance and everything just disappears into some hazy mass. There was no point of reference to head to in the distance. Just haze. You catch up to the haze, only to be met by more haze. At points I swore I was just cycling within some giant circle, as sand backs to the left seemed to repeat themselves every km or so. Gap in the dune. Stream. Open topped dunes. Tree covered dunes. Repeat. All top with glorious long white fluffy clouds. Repeating their fluffy ways down the length of the beach. It was a proper test. It break up the journey, I would just close my eyes and just keep cycling. 

Wild horses on the beach.

I nearly missed a group of wild horses being all horse like and wild on the beach. I was too busy taking the first of what I will coin 'bikies' because there are just not enough pointless words cluttering up the English language. This will be my legacy to the world! Although I did start thinking about all the things we do not notice in everyday life. How many crazy things go on in life that we just don't notice because we are absorbed by something else or just looking in the wrong direction?

"Bikie" a potentially annoying word.

I am almost certain that I saw my first penguin in the wild. I think. I cannot be sure. It was laying face down in the sand and covered in flies. Decided to not to investigate too much as it was a bit depressing as I have always wanted to see penguins in the wild. It is not how I imagined how my first time would be like.

It was a hard days worth of cycling, with the last 20km being particularly hard. At this point my leg kept cramping up, the sun was setting and the tide was advancing. I had thought about that story about the king who tried controlling the sea by throwing stones or something at the sea and shouting at it to go back to whether it came from. Bloody sea coming to our shores with your lunar cycles. There were no stones for me, just washed up jelly fish. Not as effective as stones. So I just glared at the sea. My feet got wet. 

As the sea advanced, the further towards the coastline I got pushed. The closer to the coastline I got, the greater the distance was for me to get to the turn off. Which lead to more time on the beach and the greater chance of having to camp out in the dunes. I made it to the camp site not long before the darkness of night began setting in. For what was meant to be an easy day turned into a very testing day. Both physically and mentally. I succeeded but I was feeling destroyed from the trip and mentally numbed. What have I committed myself to?

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word! 

The internet is a luxury.

Posts about the progress of the journey will be a bit haphazard in terms of chronological order.  Access to the internet can be a bit patchy and at times expensive, also, I get horrific phone coverage.  So not always easy to check in to say that I have not been eaten by a swarm of stray sheep.  To counter this, I have a book and a plastic thing that writes to record what I have been up to.  It also explains why you are reading about the beginning of the journey, 4 days after I set off.  It is a bit like a time capsule.  Sort of.  


Day 1.  Easy beginnings.  
Cape Reinga to Tapotupotu 
Daily total: 6.06km Running total: 6.06km

Started the day after a terrible nights sleep and an early bus to catch (7.15am!).  To make it worse, there was no coffee to be found and my phone had been out of reception for a good half day.  A good start.  Starting off with no communication to the outside world in a quiet part of the country. 

I was expecting a straight up bus trip to the starting point at Cape Reinga.  That was not the case.  We visited a $1million walkway specifically built for the Queen's visit at some point in the past.  Turns out she took a few steps on it and then buggered off.  Some good PR work there Queen.  Then some countryside, then drove down 90 mile beach (interesting fact, it is not 90 miles long. It is shorter than that and no one has any idea to where the name came from).  Then a stop to go sand boarding (like sledging, but on gurt sand dunes).  I was not going to go in a bid to save my legs for the bike (running up dunes is hard) but I could not resist sliding down those glorious yellow dunes...twice.  Good way not to tire myself out.  

Sand dunes aside, the plan for the day radically altered.  Initially, it was going to be the lift up to Cape Reinga and then a long burn down to 90 Mile Beach to the first stop off point in Ahipara.  By the time I was ready to set off it was 3pm, so a pretty ambitious plan.  So decided to camp at the closest camp ground...a whole 6km away! Serious distance covered for the first day! Get me...the next 2089km will be a breeze. Sorry, 2083km!

That is me. This is what I look like. I like to squeeze the disappointment in early. There I am holding my over laden bike in front just near the start of Cape Reinga. Again, a massive thank you to Awesomenz for the free bus ride up to Cape Reinga. It made the start of the journey so much easier.

To the left is me at the very starting point of the whole journey, as well as the first time I tried riding the bike with all the gear properly attached. It seems a nice start, but out of shot to the right is a big hill.  A big hill that reaches for the sky. Got to hit the ground running. I made it and managed to build upon the ache acquired from running up over massive sand dunes...

Prelude

Even before getting to the bus in the center of Auckland,
I immediately realised a number of things:
1) A half empty bag does not need to be filled to the top.
2) Stuff is heavy.
3) Heavy equals slow.
4) Slow equals longer timescales.
5) I dislike bungee cords.

Pictured: Some of the stuff

Cycling to town with the constant threat of rain with a mixture of excitement, panic and trying to maintain my balance on my badly packed bike.  All my gear loaded onto one side of the bike, so completely off balance. Did I not learn anything from school?  Although I did fail Physics at college. That would explain the lack of logic behind the packing.  The main point is, I am on my way!

Can I just start skip the first post?

There have been too many false starts in trying to get the blog off the ground and I have spent waaaaaay too much time of trying to think up of the perfect first post.  Trying to come up with something deep and meaning and well constructed in terms of flow and blah.  

Then I realised, that whole thought process goes against the very name of 'Bluffing It'.  To be honest, I have never really blogged before to an audience.  All my previous musing on the internet have really been me typing at people.  This time is different.  I am out of my comfort zone and feel exposed.  Over the next few days, weeks, months, I am going to be documenting many things that I have never tried before to you guys.  I know that there are people I know who are reading this (hello) and I also know that there are people I do not know, complete strangers reading this (hello).  People who have never met me will be forming an opinion on me, based on the words you see before you.  As I mentioned before, I have put waaaaaay too much thought into this first post. I've digressed.

I have never ran a fundraising campaign on this scale before (well ever), I have not done as much training as I should have nor have I ever cycled such a large distance nor spent so much time on the road.  So the initial stages of this fundraising project have been very difficult, not in terms of what I have to learn, but in terms of putting myself in such a public place, telling people and getting people to tell other people that I am going to undertake such an ambitious task.  I am out of my comfort zone.  The fear of failure is strong but it won't beat me.  There will be no excuses.  I am making it to Bluff.  I am Bluffing It for real.

I think I may overcome my fear of the 'first post'.  Come on self doubt. You're next!

Feel free to comment away. It can be about anything, from suggestions to places to visit, questions about how to donate to feedback about my writing skills or even if you want want to get involved. Let me know.  Due to the spiteful nature of technology, leaving comments is not a straight forward process as you think it would be...to post a comment, you need to sign in using a google account or just select the anonymous option on the drop down box. Comment away and spread the word!