Barry the Blister

It's taken three days for Brian and I to cycle from Nelson to Westport, and what do I have to show for it? No, not abs of steel. No, bugs are not stuck in my teeth. No, my dear friends, I am afraid I have gained one heck of a blister. Where? Well, I hate to admit this to all of you who are following along, but I've got Barry, Barry the Blister, on my ass. Yes, on my ass. There. I've said it. When I discovered that I had a blister on my ass, the first thing I thought was, "Oh, that must be why my butt hurt so much while we were riding" and then the second thought was, "This will make a great blog story." It hurts like hell, and I can't sit on hard surfaces. Dammit. I've managed to keep the blister un-popped, and I hope to keep it that way. Suffice to say, we're taking today and perhaps tomorrow off to allow for some critical healing time, in amongst the earthquakes (yes, wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night earthquakes). Here's a bit of photo action from our three days of riding... Our new tent, MSR Hubba Hubba. Appropriately named, I say.Our first camping night (free camping thanks to random local approaching us while we cooked dinner just off the main street in Wakefield) was a success. The possums stayed clear of us, lucky for them... The following morning was just lovely. This is my view when I'm drafting Brian. I like drafting. I like my view. Bikes among friends! Albeit rusty friends. Third night of camping was good, except for the sand fly masses... We managed okay with a little breeze during dinner, but in the morning, upon waking up, we realized that our either carbon dioxide levels or obtuse ranky smell (a few days of riding with zero showers) attracted nearly the entire sand fly population to our tent. Luckily, none of the little bastards got inside until we armoured ourselves up and bolted out from under our orange shelter. AHHHHHH! Mangy little blood-sucking bastards. If you've experienced them, you'd use worse words than that, let me tell you.... On a happy note, I'll describe some of the food we've been fortunate to ingest during our trip, even though grocery stores have been scarce. We bought some homemade marmalade off the side of the road. So gooood. Cous-cous and quinoa hot dish with peas, nuts, tomatoes and stupendous sundried tomato feta cheese. Add a few ginger beers, and we've got one heck of a dinner. Curry pasta for four (yeah, right), more stupendous feta cheese. No bugs. Yum. One kilogram of frozen raspberries off the side of the road. Totally worth the weight, and lasted barely two days. Our favourite salty friend, Vegemite. The best darned bacon and egg and beef burger I've ever had! (see description of said burger in blog entry below)...

Hmmm... I'm getting hungry. All this is making me think of our last two meals we cooked in the hostel which were out of this world: chicken fajitas with some major doctoring up with avacados, olives, plain yogurt, and more... Mmm... Then for breakfast we had egg fajitas with all of the above once again. Ooooooooooh. And we've treated ourselves to a sweet little package of Tim Tams!.... All this talk of food..... Oh dear, I'm going to implode, I'm so hungry. What's for lunch, Brian? I'm craving some meat again. I promise not to make this entire cycling portion of my blog all about food. At least I'll try. One last thing for today. We have started a working list of how many honks, etc, we get while riding. I'll try to keep this updated as the blog goes along. Honks: 4 Waves: at least 30 "Good on ya!": 3 "How ya goin?!": 3 "Woo-Hoo!":1