Firstly you will be doing it for yourself. Just promise yourself you are going to do it. If you hit the wall and question why you are doing it, if you are alone you wont have anyone there to talk sense to you, so your gonna need to talk sense to yourself.  Talk to yourself.  I developed a regular conversation with myself on the side of the road, berating myself and asking if I was a quitter.  Sounds harsh and slightly insane, but I got angry and by getting angry I got going. Anger is a great motivator, it really is.

Here is another trick for those really desperate moments when you find it hard to get angry.  Before you leave, when you have a clear mind, write down on a bit of paper in fairly strong language why you are doing it, seal it in an envelope and stash it in your bag.  When you hit rock bottom, and think you want to quit, open the envelope and read what you wrote to yourself at the beginning.  Your reasons wont have changed, only your mood has.  Without a strong reason for yourself, you may not have the motivation to get through it when the going gets tough.

Do it for someone else whom you care about. I wanted to do my ride not only to get myself into a better place, but also because of my mum.  She has been the single most inspirational person in my life and I wanted to do it for her.  She has spent the vast majority of her life in a wheelchair, and never gave up.  Every time I got low, I just thought about her, and it kept me going (and then some).  I would be a a point of despair and all I needed to do was remind myself about mum and the tough moments she must have faced, and all of a sudden I would get a rush and I would be off again with tears streaming down my face laughing and punching the sky.

Tell the world about your ride. Make it impossible for you to not do it, or you will be letting everyone down.  This is the fear of being a “quitter”!!  Originally when I started to plan my ride, I just wanted to do it for me. A quiet affair, a personal journey.  But then I realised the fear of quitting WAS why I wasn’t doing it for any other reason, and I wasn’t telling everyone was because I was afraid of failing, or worse, quitting.  I was afraid I wasn’t going to go through with it. I stopped and thought, “do I really think I will fail? No.  Do I really think I will quit? Maybe.” So I told everyone.  I created the blog, and told all my friends and colleagues about my ride.  Then I started spreading the word.  The more people that knew about it the more motivation to do it, and the more people would know I quit if I gave up.

The biggest fear by far you will have is the fear of failure.  And failure is of course a distinct possibility.  If it was a walk in the park then you wouldn’t be doing it, so the risk of something going wrong is real, as is the risk that you physically, mentally or emotionally wont be able to do it.  These are all valid reasons for not completing your quest.  If you break a leg, or completely exhaust yourself then no one expects you to finish.  But just”quitting because it is hard” is not a valid reason, and that is why you will fear this the most.  You will feel like quitting on more than one occasion, the secret is to be well stocked with motivation.  You will remember you are doing it for yourself, and berate yourself back onto the bike.  You will remember you are doing it for people you care about, and this will raise your spirits.  You will be doing it for a charity and all the great things they will be able to do with the funds, and you will be doing it so you can hold your head up high with your peers, including those who already think you will probably quit, and ultimately you will be doing it so you can get to the end and say,

“I just rode the length of New Zealand, on a bike, and I didn’t quit”.  Having the right to say that is a fantastic motivator, and is a damn crazy awesome feeling.

It’s the Internet stupid!  Today it is not hard to be connected on the go through the use of an internet enabled mobile phone ,and one of these will keep you sane.  On my trip I found it very lonely, and often stopped on the side of the road feeling down and out after 4 hours of riding over hills wondering if I would ever make it to my destination.  I would pull out my phone and check for messages from people online and whenever I got one from one of my supporters out there, it would really pick my spirits up and I would off again with new bounce.  I communicated with people through my blog, using twitter, Facebook, YouTube and various photo sharing sites.  Here is a run down on how you can easily setup and use each of these to keep everyone informed and gain more supporters, both online and in the real world.

A blog.

Get a blog.  It is really easy to do and quick to set up and this will be your platform for communicating with the world.  You can set up a free blog online at www.wordpress.com, www.tumblr.com, www.blogger.com and through a number of other very easy to use online services.  I used WordPress.  You will be able to customise the look and feel to your liking.  Your blog will be your website that people will go to to find out all about your adventure, and should have details on why you are doing it, info on how people can help/donate, and lots and lots of posts from you about what you are doing, where you have been and what you are experiencing AS YOU GO.  I would write a full run down on my trip roughly once a week, and each day would post a quick update letting people know where I was and where I was going.  This made it real, relevant and current to all the people who are following your progress.  Once you have the blog the next step is to let people know it is there.

Social networking (Twitter, Facebook).

The easiest way to make people aware of your trip is to use all of your existing contacts, friends and family, to spread the word.  You can use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to help you here.  Before you go, start updating your status on Twitter and Facebook to let people know you are about to go on a fantastic adventure, and give a link out to your blog for more info.  Then when you are underway, update your status as you go, as frequent as you like.  I primarily used Twitter to update people on the go as it is more of a “now” thing.  On my rest breaks I would tweet from my phone where I was, what I was doing or any interesting observations from my ride.  Then the cool thing was that within minutes I got replies back from people following my progress.  People love the fact that you can be on a bike or pogo stick in the middle of nowhere and be sharing the experience with others.  It is relatively easy to send photos from your phone through Twitter and Facebook also, and this is a fabulous way to let people live vicariously through you and your adventure.

YouTube.

As I went I took a small portable video camera, a Flip MinoHD.  These are ultra light and compact and let you film stuff as you go, that you can later plug into a computer and upload to video sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo.  I edited mine as I went on a laptop allowing me to add music and nice cuts and transitions.  Unfortunately this meant having to carry an extra 4kg of computer with me but it was well worth it.  Every week I posted up a video of my progress and the feedback I got was awesome.

On YouTube, see the 'Embed' field on the right. Just copy and paste the code into your blog post.

Video is also a great way to virally spread awareness of your journey through the Internet and it is much more entertaining and novel than a regular blog post.  When you put up a new video, use Twitter and Facebook to send a status message with a link to the video.

If you are posting videos to YouTube, be sure to embed them into your blog also.  From your YouTube account just follow the ‘embed’ instructions which will give you some code to cut and paste into your blog post, and viola.

I edited all my video on my laptop, my MacBook, using iMovie which has to be one of the easiest video editing programs I have ever used.  If you are not familiar with video editing and want to do video updates as you go, then I strongly suggest taking a Mac and using iMovie.  It will make it so much easier.

Photo sharing.

There are of course photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa but I just used quick and easy pic.im and twitpic.com to send photos from my mobile phone as I went, and again automatically tweeted links to these through Twitter.  It gave people a near instantaneous snapshot of where you are and what you can see.

Google Maps.

A great way to show where you have been and where you are going is to put some maps into your site.  Google maps is really easy to embed into a blog post, like I did, to show a daily route.  Again just look for the “embed” link and follow the instructions.

Email.

Send out emails to everyone in your address book.  This is probably the only time you are going to get away with a mail bomb to all you know  Write a good email detailing what you are doing and invite all your friends to get in behind you, by visiting your blog, watching videos, following you on Twitter and so on.  Then ask them to tell all their friends.  When you are one week into the trip, send another one letting them know you are on your way.

Take a good phone.

To keep connected you will need a good internet enabled phone, and one preferably that can run downloaded applications like a good Twitter client, so you are not having to wrestle with the mini web browser built in to the phone.  I took my iPhone with me and it was the near perfect device.  I could take photos and send them instantaneously through to Twitter.  I could surf the web, send emails and play games when I was bored in the evening.

I also took a laptop.  It let me do more intensive things like write long blog posts and edit video and photos without needing to visit an Internet cafe.  You can get away with doing all of the above by using Internet cafes, but these may be few and far between in some parts, and you will have some problems editing video as you won’t likely have access to a good video editing program.

Pester the media.

Good media coverage is invaluable but it is hard to wrangle it.  The only tip I can give here is to email and phone every newspaper, current affairs/news TV show, radio station, blog site you can and ask others to do the same.  The media will start of a little sceptical, and they wont cover your trip on day one.  They will want to know you are serious and will actually get to the end so don’t get disheartened.  The further you go the more likely you will get more coverage.  Hit the local, regional newspapers and radio stations a few days ahead of when you will be arriving so they have plenty of time to arrange a photographer or a slot on the radio breakfast show.  Now I found this all pretty hard going.  I would spend my evenings writing emails and making phone calls and when you are talking to media after slogging your guts out on a bike all day it is a struggle to sound upbeat and enthusiastic.  If you can offload all the media wrangling off to someone else to do.  This way you can focus on your goal.  I am a sadist, and wanted to see if I could do it all myself, but I can tell you this, it is no picnic.  In the end I got some fantastic help from someone in the PR game which ended up in some really awesome coverage.

Make it easy for people to donate.

There are great ways to let people to donate to your cause easily.  You have the traditional can of coins to collect as you go but this can get kinda heavy on a bike.  Talk to a lot of people and tell them what you are doing.  People will be more than happy to buy you lunch, or give you a fiver after a quick chat.  It is a good idea to get a t-shirt or a sign made up that makes it clear to passers by that you are doing it all for charity.  I just walked up to people and talked to them, purely out of loneliness, but once I started getting media exposure people started coming up to me.  Make it easy for people to identify you.  I wore a bright red jacket in all the newspaper articles and on TV and then wore it every day.  This helped make me recognisable.  I also have a really big moustache so that probably helped too

Sign up with a site like www.givealittle.co.nz, where they enable people to donate money to your cause easy and online with either a voucher or a credit card.  e-commerce for your fundraiser!  They can also be your blog to and let you post up frequent updates about your adventure that informs all your Givealittle supporters automatically.  They also have a cool widget that you can embed into your site that gives the current total raised so far.

Lastly give out a postal address or even a bank account number so people can send you money in other ways.  Corporate sponsors will want to be able to do this.

So in conclusion, if you can do all of the above then you will get some pretty good online support and following, but it all depends on what you have the appetite for.  I had a lot of free time in the evenings so was quite happy to tap away writing blog posts and chatting to people online.  You might prefer to sleep  I knew it was all working when my wife stopped ringing me every day.  After a few days of silence I had to ring her to make sure everything was okay.  ”Yeah we are all good.  I didn’t bother ringing as I just read your blog, scanned your tweets, looked at your photos and checked out your map for tomorrow.  I can see you are still alive.”

Next will be the final post in this series – getting to the end, where I will wrap it all up explaining how to make sure you get to the finish line.

• Water – This is pretty important so I put it first.  Take 2-3 litres with you each day.  As I was cycling 4-6 hours a day, in the sun I would go through a lot of water very quickly so I carried 3 litres with me.
• Food – Being on the road can be very expensive and you cant expect to dine out every day for breakfast lunch and dinner.  You will need to take your daily supplies with you or face going broke. The key is to take only enough supplies for today+1, and restock as you arrive at your destination each day.  That way your will eat dinner and breakfast before moving on so that’s two meals you wont have to carry.  I would carry a dozen muesli bars and some tinned meals with me, that could be eaten out of the can or heated up.  Each day when I got near my destination I would look to get some more exciting foods for dinner and breakfast but it is near impossible to shop for food to make a decent meal for one.  You will probably end up carrying bread, cheese and other stuff in your bags over a few days.  It is worth taking a bit of extra weight with food as your body is you engine, you have to keep it well fuelled.  Tinned stuff like tuna and baked beans are good for protein and very convenient.  Keep a couple of tins at the bottom of your bag, as you WILL get stuck at some point and need these for emergency nourishment.  Stuff some muesli bars somewhere handy for on the go refuelling.
• Clothes – Have the best layers for the worst conditions.  I took far too many clothes to start off with but there is nothing like experiencing the actual conditions to determine what you will need.  Once I shed all the extra items I didn’t need I settled on the following:
  Bike shorts (2) – The built in padding for your arse is essential.  I took a second pair so I could alternate them, letting them rest and breath
  Light and fast drying trousers with big pockets – Long trousers keep he sun off your legs and give you plenty of pockets for stuffing things into.  I wore these over the top of my bike shorts and they were pretty comfortable.  On hot days I took off the trousers, but more often than not I just had warmer legs.  When it rained they helped keep my legs less wet and warmer.
  Thermal base layer – Icebreaker thermals! Essential essential essential. I wore my Icebreakers every day, sometimes as my only layer on top.  Icebreaker merino is magic.  It keeps you warm and cool and does not smell even after a week of wear.
  Merino socks (2 pairs)- Warm and cool and don’t smell (too much).  You will want to keep your extremities warm and your feel nice and comfy.
  Rain jacket –  This will be your saviour, especially if you are planning to ride through every kind of weather like I did.  I picked up a 2XU cycling jacket, which unfortunately I would NOT recommend.  The jacket despite being water proof, kept the wind off, but not the rain out. Inevitably I got drenched, but fortunately with my other layers beneath I kept warm.  On the second day of wearing the 2XU jacket, some of the stitching started coming undone. For a $300 jacket, I thought the workmanship was poor and all it really did was keep the wind off.  You can will find a better wind-jacket for a quarter of the price.  Also when I contacted 2XU to draw their attention to the problem I was having with the jacket, they denied their was any problem with their apparel and so the problem must have been of my own doing.  I would steer clear of 2XU as their after sales support does not exist and it appears to be a hollow overpriced brand.  Boo to you 2XU!
  A good breathable cycling shirt – On hot days you will wear only this on top, and on cold days you will layer this with your base layer and wind jacket.  I started out with a few changes of shirt but in the end I only wore one, so posted the others home.
  High visibility vest – You will want this on anytime you think visibility may be low.  Hell, just wear it all the time.  Be safe, be seen.  These also add wind protection too.
  Warm head wear and gloves –  You will want these on the coldest of cold days, and when you get off the bike for evenings and early mornings.  I found that I didn’t usually need gloves on the bike and after 20 minutes of pedalling my blood was flowing nice and warm to my hands.  I had both Icebreaker gloves and hat and can highly recommend both.
  Warm jumper – You will need something warm and handy for when you stop, so you don’t get too cold.  If you cool down too fast it will be hard to get going again.  You will wear this in the evenings too so take something tidy and smart so you look like a regular human.
  Clean casual wear so you don’t stink in public – You will want to integrate into society as you go, perhaps going out for a meal or even just to stock up on supplies.  If you want to actually talk to people, you will need to be relatively presentable.  I took a couple of changes of “civvies” so I was somewhat approachable .  You are fund-raising remember, so will be wanting to talk to as many people as possible.  Make it a pleasant experience for them
• Tools and spares – You will need some bits and pieces to ensure that you keep going should something go wrong with your gear.  You will want the right tools to be able to maintain all the nuts, bolts and screws that hold your ride together. If possible, you need to be able to take everything apart and put it back together with only the tools you take.  You can guarentee that the screw you dont have the right allan key for will be the one that comes undone. Here is a run down on what I took:
  Spanner – this was annoying as there were only a couple of things on my bike that required the torque of a spanner and it was heavy.  However, you have to cover off all your bases.  I should have found the smallest spanner I could find but resorted to taking one out of the shed at home.
  Small set of multi-tools, allan keys, screwdriver etc – These are brilliant and have all the sizes of allan keys and screwdrivers you are likely to need for a bike.
  Swiss army style pocket knife or Leatherman. – If you forget a tool, this will be probably what you will fall back on to cut, screw or bend something.
  Bike specific stuff…
  Bike pump – Ahh yeah.  It’s hard to pump up a tube with your mouth.
  Spare tubes – I took three, as you may not be passing a bike shop very often.
  Puncture kit - for when you don’t pass a bike shop very often and need to patch up one of your spent spares.
  Chain oil, spare chain links
  Cable ties – Essential.  These are handy for securing all sorts of bits and pieces to your bike.
• Plastic bags – for keeping stuff dry and seperating smelly things from things you don’t want to be smelly.
• Personal locator beacon – This was my wife’s idea, but probably a good one.  Worst case scenario you fall into a ravine.  You break both legs.  You are not visible from the road and no one can hear you scream.  Night is falling and hungry Keas are circling.  With one of these puppies at hand all it takes is a simple push of the big red button on the front and it will send out your co-ordinates to rescue services and you will be being winched by helicopter out of the ravine in no time.  These things add a bit of weight as they appear to be all battery, but they will keep your partner sleeping at nights.
• Cameras – Photo and video is essential.  You will not only want something to look back on 10 years after, but this is a great way to get other people engaged. Share the sights and sounds with the world as you travel.  I took a Flip MinoHD for video which was super compact and convenient.  My iPhone was also my camera. I uploaded photos and video on a regular basis so everyone could see I was really doing it, and could see what I could see.  People will live vicariously through your adventure, so make it as rich an experience as possible.  Here is a post I wrote before my ride about all the tech gadgets I took.
• Laptop – This was essential for me, but is really a luxury.  I used it to edit all my video as I went and posted regular videos to YouTube.  I wrote blog posts in the evenings and researched my daily routes online.  It was my connection with the rest of the world online.  I agonised about taking my laptop before I left as it and all its associated bits and pieces probably added 4kg to my overall weight, but it was worth it as it let me keep everyone else in touch with my progress.  I will cover keeping in touch with the world as you go in the next post.
• Maps and a guide book - Always carry paper maps and information as these never run out of batteries.  I took a couple of Pedlars Paradise NZ cycling guide books with me.  These are fantastic books with maps, elevation charts and information on accommodation and supply points.  These only cover New Zealand but I am sure there are similar books for every cycle friendly part of the globe.
• Sleeping bag – To sleep in.

Your shopping list may be a little different.  If you take too much, you can, as I did, post the non-essential stuff home and lighten up your load.  It is easier to post it than to realise you don’t have it in the middle of Nangatokatoka on a Sunday night.  If you have a support crew then they can carry more gear, and you don’t need to be so anal about weight.  If you are carrying all your gear like I did, here is a tip. Some of the weight you will carry will be stuff you don’t need every day.  If you know where you will be in five days box up a lot of the stuff you can do without for a few days and post it to yourself further up the line. By doing this you will save a lot of effort compared to lugging it all around especially if you have a few days of hills on a bike ahead. You will have to be sure the postal service beats you there though

Next post, keeping everyone informed.

When to do it. Super super important as this will determine pretty much everything else like what you will take, how far you will travel each day and your options for accommodation.  When I looked at how the hell I was going to achieve my bike ride from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga, I first set myself some timeframes.  It was important to have plenty of time to prepare and plan, there is no point in taking any shortcuts here. I wanted to do the ride before the end of 2009 so this gave me a year to do it. Next I worked out the best times of the year  to spend weeks on a bike. My choices were between Autumn or Spring. Winter would be too cold, and Summer too hot.  Going in Autumn gave me 5 months to prepare, Spring 9-10 months.

The weather can play a huge part in your trip.  On a bike, the rain and wind will affect you considerably. A headwind or a tailwind can make a big impact on your ride.  I studied the weather for that time of year and sourced some long range forecasts which gave me an indication of when I should go, and which route I should take.  Long range forecasts are pretty good for general predictions, like will it be a wet week or a dry one.  They won’t tell you the wind direction and temperature of Wednesday the 12th of May, but it will give you a good guesstimate.  With weather you need to be prepared to either change routes/plans as you go or be prepared to deal with bad weather as you go.  This will affect the gear you take and how you prepare physically.

Taking into account I picked Autumn, as I would be cycling north and the winds should be turning into a southerly tailwind. The weather looked like I would have extended periods of clear skies, and when it was wet it hopefully wouldn’t be too cold.  Heading north, I would be leaving the colder south behind me. Autumn was also a better option as it was sooner, so I had less chance to put the whole thing off. After a quick look at what I needed to do to get ready,  I figured it was very achievable to get ready in 5 months, and should there be any hitches, then I would have Spring as my fallback. So, in order to get ready, I would need to organise all my gear, and get in shape.

How to do it. I started riding, which is a good start especially when you haven’t been on a bike for close to 20 years.  I started out slow, then increased the frequency of my rides riding every couple of days.  I picked a short but challenging route that had a lot of steep hills and no flats.  I figured that hills would be one of the toughest parts of my ride and something I would really struggle with.  So I focused solely on the ups and downs until I was good at it.  Well when I say good I mean I no longer vomited going uphill.

I rode for half an hour to an hour.  I didn’t focus on long distances, as if I couldn’t deal with hilly terrain then there was not much hope of me completing the ride. This concerned most of my friends and family, who would see me coming back from a 40 minute ride panting and exhausted and wondered how I would manage with six hours riding each day. Luckily the vast majority of the route up New Zealand was nothing like my training route and so after two months of busting a gut on hills I went on my first long flat ride, and it was a breeze. It was now looking like I could do both hills and distance.  I would not know if I could do it every day for two months until I was actually on the ride.

I broke down my training into small achievable milestones, and as I achieved each one I then pushed myself a little harder.  So if I rode my training run in 40 minutes.  I would set out to do it in 38 and I would add a few more kilometres to the route.  I measured my times and distances on each ride and looked for improvement.  As long as I was riding faster and longer, and feeling better at the end then I was making progress.

Setting out some milestones on your journey as you go will help you keep on track and reduce the risk of failure.  Planning a daily schedule is important to know where you will start and end each day, especially important if your range is 80km a day, and the distance between two towns on a particular part of your route is 160km, with nowhere to stop in-between.  That could be problematic, so best to figure this out well in advance and come up with an alternate route, or take a tent.  Knowing where you should be each day reduces the risk of failure, as it gives you something to measure yourself against to see if you are falling behind.  If you do fall behind then you need to be able to adjust your plan to get back on schedule.  It also helps with planning replenishment stops for supplies like food and water, inner tubes, and other important things like Internet access and hot pools.  One of the most time consuming parts of my planning was planning where I was going to get to each day of my journey and research the accommodation options for each stop.  And so before I left I had planned a number of possible routes, depending on weather.  Then as I rode and altered my route to suit, I knew I had options for places to stay wherever I went.  I also knew where all the bike shops were so I could replace bike spares.

What you will need to do it. I obviously needed a bike, and researched the types of bikes and selected a bike that would be robust enough to get me to the end.  I didn’t pick a fast bike, as someone once told me it was not a race.  I just had to get to the end.  Instead I went for solid, reliable workhorse that was comfortable.  I was going to spend a long time in the saddle so I also wanted comfort over speed.

One great way to reduce risk is to take a support crew. I didn’t as for me a very important part of the trip was to do it unassisted and alone.  This meant I had to take less gear and carry everything on the bike.  The gear you take will make a huge difference to your risk profile of the trip. Planning the right clothing will be one of the most important planning decisions you will make.  If you have a support crew you can be a bit more relaxed about space and weight.  When you go solo you will weight everything.  My next post is all about gear so I will cover this all off then.

So once I knew when to go, knew if I could actually ride a bike, had figured out what to take and had planned all my routes, I put all this together and created my final master plan.  Then I refined it over and over again, triple checking everything and looking for ways to improve it. The more I checked and refined my plan, the more risk I removed. Review your plan with a friend, someone with a fresh set of eyes.  They might pick up on some flaws that you might not see, like the fact you are crossing an alpine pass, probably in the snow, and you don’t have any suitable snow gear or a tent.  Stuff like that.

Having a compreghensive plan let me focus on other things in the saddle each day, like how pretty the mountains were and how sore my arse was.  I just executed the plan, and enjoyed the ride.

Next I will cover the gear I took to reduce the risk even further.

If someone wanted to swim, pogo, rollerskate, or ride a bike their way on a journey of a few thousand kms, what advice would I give them?  Well I have broken it down into in a series of posts where I will cover:

• The idea – What exactly are you going to almost kill yourself doing.
• Planning – How to make sure you don’t actually kill yourself.  It is all about planning, planning and more planning baby (then a bit more planning thrown in for good measure).
• What to take – The essential items for survival and sanity.  I will review what I took on my ride and why.
• Keeping everyone informed – Letting people know your still alive, and moving. How do you raise awareness of your adventure and at the same time let your wife/husband/parents sleep at night and keep everyone in the loop?
• Getting to the end – How to accomplish your goal (or die trying).  What I learnt “on the job” that got me through to the very end.

The idea.

You could argue that this is the most important step.  Without the idea you will be still doing your 9-5 job and no one will want to donate money for you to do that.  So the idea needs to be suitably interesting and hard.  It is one thing to pick something you are really good at and can do very well in moderation, but setting out to walk to work every day for a week may not be the sort of thing that will inspire people to get in behind your cause, unless of course you live 50km from your office, and it is snowing.  The idea needs to be achievable, measurable, inspirational, and most importantly, really really hard for you to do.  Think of why you want to do it too. For me, I was inspired by my mother who has spent the majority of her life (and all of mine) in a wheelchair.  I wanted to do something on wheels that was also a tribute to her and all the tough times she must have faced and overcome. You may have your own reasons with special meaning and it is these sorts of connections that will keep you going later on when you are exhausted and hit rock bottom.

Achievable.  To be achievable, you need to know it is something you can more than likely succeed at.  No one wants to set out on an adventure that they know deep inside is doomed right from the start, but at the same time don’t expect to break 12 Olympic records either, because that is probably impossible.  Having said that, impossible is one of those funny words that people tend to misuse. Originally when I was thinking about my ride, I chose it because I thought is was impossible for me to do.  Then I realised that actually I could do it therefor it wasn’t impossible, it was just highly improbable.  Impossible and improbable are two very different things so don’t confuse them.  Leave that up to everyone else to do and let them be surprised when they realise you are doing what they think is impossible.

Measurable.  Next, to be measurable your goal needs to be something that others can see and measure your progress on. When you set out, people will pretty much be in one of two camps; those who think you can do it and those who think you will fail.  As you go they need to be able to validate their position, or be proven wrong. I cycled from one end of New Zealand to the other, a route that has a distance of 2,266km, wrapped up in a timeframe of 7 weeks. I had a mix of people who thought I could do it, but a large number of people who thought I would fail miserably. I was measuring my ride every day with the distance I travelled and how many days I had been on the bike. The further I went the more I validated those who believed me, and made it more compelling for those who thought I would fail to keep following my progress.  I called these “public” metrics.

Public metrics are those that are easily verified by their very own nature.  For example, by crossing geography you have the benefit of it being self validating.  When you were at A and then get to B, it is obvious that you are succeeding.When you report you just rode 100km in a day and you are now in Dunedin, this is easily understood and realised by others.  It is more real to them than if you say, set a goal to NOT eat 12 donuts a day.  This sort of metric is not as real to others as they can’t easily validate it. In order to prove it you would need to go to great lengths to show people you are actually achieving your mission.  So that metric is private.  By doing it, only you really know it to be so.  Each day I cycled from one place to the other, it was immediately evident to others that I was on the road, literally, to achieving my goal.  It was real.  At the same time I was also measuring myself on my fitness and how much weight I lost, and these were “private” metrics.  I shared them with the world but they were not as dynamic and really only I could easily realise them on a regular basis.

Inspirational.  Do something that has a bit of “crazy” in it.  This could be anything, and will be different for different people.  But the key is to pick something that people don’t normally do, and that others would not image is possible of YOU.  If you are a complete bike nut, and occasionally enter bike races and sometimes win then you wouldn’t choose to just ride the length of NZ as I did. Instead you would choose to ride NZ in under a week, naked.  That would have more “crazy”.  I was overweight and unfit and no one would have ever imagined I would ride a bike to the shop let alone from one end of the country to the other.

To inspire others, but more importantly yourself, you will need to break through some barriers that would normally stop you.  These barriers could be age, fitness, mental state, geography, culture … anything. Anything that would stop you when it probably shouldn’t. But it also needs to be …

…really really hard.  If it was easy then everyone will think “So what, I can do that”.  You need to challenge yourself otherwise you wont do it.  That may sound stupid, but if you knew you could really do it and it would be easy, you wouldn’t do it.  One of the big reasons why you are embarking on your adventure is to prove to yourself that you can do it.  Oh and to prove wrong all those bastards who think you will fail.

So have you got your idea?

In the next few posts I will cover planning, what to take, how to keeping everyone informed and how to make sure you get to the end.  I will use my bike ride as the example, but I am sure it will apply to what ever you choose to do on your adventure.

I have been making good progress on my riding preparation, I am happy to say. Well at least I think it is good progress. I have been doing a lot of short evening rides around my neighbourhood as conditioning, and I figure every hour on the bike is good preparation, considering I will be shortly be living on one for 6 weeks. My neighbourhood is not your typical suburb. For a start it is not a suburb. I live out in the boonies, on a rather hilly peninsular. As soon as I am out of my driveway I have hills hills glorious hills all around me. I never really noticed them before, in my car, well I knew they were there but rather they didn’t exactly bother me.

So I have been doing a fair bit of hill practice. I figure (or rather hope) that the rest of New Zealand is not a quick succession of hill after hill, so if I can master riding the local hill-a-rama then it should leave me in good stead for the rest of the country. Here is a typical route I take.

As you can see from the elevation diagram, there is a bit of flat, but a lot of up and down. I know each of the hills by heart and have found that I have named them. There is Sarah, Bob, Harry and Frank to name a few. Why have I named them, I have no idea, but it just seemed like the thing to do. It is hard to hate inanimate things, so I thought by giving them names I would find hating them easier. You see, the good thing, apparently, about going up a hill is going down the other-side, but the pain of 5 minutes going up is not sufficiently redeemed by the 20 seconds going down. I don’t really think the whole set-up is particularly fair to be honest. Grind grind grind grind grind grind, followed by a quick and very short “wheee”, which is in turn followed by more grind grind grind grind kinda pisses me off. After consuming most of my energy going up the damn thing, I am far too buggered to enjoy the downward rush and the wind racing through your hair and my head seems to manage to find every flying insect on the way down. Then I have to repeat the whole damn procedure again, and again and again. I fantasise about the short steep hill going up, that becomes a gentle decline over 200kms. I think that is the sort of hill I can love, and have babies with. Instead I am surrounded by a pack of sadistic mean spirited bastards.

Also clearly when the roads were built in the countryside around my house they, being the road builders, had absolutely no idea what they were doing. For a start, why go around hills when you can build your road OVER every hill? Obviously a popular design with roads at the time, and a way for man to demonstrate his might and power to nature. “You, Nature, have put this hill in my path, but it will not stop me from building my road. I shall go over you hill, because I can, because I am man and I have a car.” So even in a car, which seemingly has no issue with hills, because of the might of clever man, actually burns more fuel and energy to get over the hill. However building the road around the hill, would seem slightly longer, in the long run the cost of the energy for vehicles to go around the hill would be far less than the cost to go over. Something you don’t really appreciate until you are on a bike.

There is one point on my route where after successfully ascending one of the larger hills the road quickly descends down into a vally. On the way down the hill I can see the road ahead snaking back up the same god-damn hill I am currently going down. I hate that hill. I despise that hill. I detest that hill. And it is always the last hill on my journey as it leads me back to home and I always have to walk up it. I have a hate hate relationship with that hill, not only because of the poor design of the road, but mainly because I can not avoid that hill. I could of course put my bike in my car and drive elsewhere to ride, away from that hill in particular, but I refuse to let one hill, and one so close to home, screw with me. That hill is Frank.

Frank and I got off on the wrong foot to start with. On my initial rides my stamina was so appalling that I could never face riding back up it after a long ride. As I approached, I could feel Frank with his evil grin sucking the energy out of my legs. My bike would quickly slowdown and as spooked horse senses evil, my bike clearly wanted to go as far away in the other direction as possible. I had other hills that I struggled with, Bob was pretty mean, but in a good challenging way, Sarah was fun to go down, but no hill was more evil than Frank which everyday stood in between me and collapsing on my couch. The more I rode around the countryside, I found myself one by one knocking off each of the other hills in the local area with much celebration. I had a couple of routes that pretty much covered every hill. With every ride I seemed to be going faster, and had more stamina. When I rode up a hill I hadn’t before I had a little dance, and congratulated myself. It was a great feeling. But every time I would have to return to face Frank again and again and again.

I went out on a particularly long ride one day. It was a Saturday and I wanted to do a 3+ hour long ride. Going up and down hills was one thing, but going a long distance for a long time was another story, so I wanted to give it a go. I had originally planned to put my bike in the car and drive somewhere particularly flat, but with a few good hills, but as I thought about it I could hear Frank’s evil hill laugh. So I thought “screw you” and set off from home, down Frank, up the peninsular over every hill and to some flat-ish land. I punished myself with the usual routine, but instead of stopping and collapsing on the couch, I kept going and rode for a couple of hours. It went exceptionally well, the further I went, the more energy I seemed to find from somewhere. I took a few short drinks breaks now and then, and just kept going, and I felt fantastic. I was burning up distance relatively quick, although I wasn’t really pushing hard. But the longer and further I went, I knew I was just delaying the inevitable return to Frank, and I would be again forced off of my bike to walk up the hill. I returned back along the same gruelling route , back to Frank, and I knocked that bastard off. The next ride I did a regular route adding a kilometre to it and did it in two minutes less time. The next ride, I shaved another two minutes off, then the next ride, another three. I had beaten the Frank voodoo. It made me feel fantastic. Every time I approach Frank I still get the feeling of impending doom, and I push myself up and over.

I have also been measuring my distance and time, to the second, and although I know that the big ride up the country will not be a race, by aiming to beat my previous time and speed each time gives me another reason to rub Frank’s face in it, and in turn I get better at riding.

I have six more weeks of training before I leave and right now I am feeling pretty positive about how things are going. Since deciding to turn my life around, I have lost 10 kilograms and four belt sizes, can ride up hills without letting them push me around, or vomiting.

The next step was to organise a bike. “That should be easy.” I thought, it needs to have two wheels, some gears, and a bell? I had been told I need a really comfortable seat so I should get one of those. To be honest I didn’t really know what I should get, so I decided to test the mettle of some bike shops. I was feeling buoyant, and excited about having committed to my goal. The first shop I visited, I took it back to basics, I wanted to know everything I would possibly need to know. I wasn’t sure what a bike salesman would be like, so I went in guns blazing.

“I want a bike, can you help?” I asked.

“Ahh, yeah we sell bikes” He replied jokingly as if it was some major revelation. “What type of riding will you be doing?”

“Hmmm, a bit of touring” I responded like I knew what I was talking about, gazing around the store at the multitude of bikes.

There were bikes for all occasions. Small red ones, with trainer wheels, fully suspended bikes for careering down mountains, sleek speedy looking bikes for going really fast. I didn’t even know if “touring” was a category. He showed me around some touring type bikes that would be good for long road trips, explained the difference in the seats, suspension, and gears. His advice tended to lean towards the more expensive end of the ranges. He could tell I knew very little.

“Done a bit of touring have you?” He asked after a while. The bike-salesman had an English accent and I was waiting for him to call me geezer and offer me a deal I couldn’t refuse.

“Nope, none at all actually but planning on a bit” I replied. I had decided that the first shop would be a practise run, especially as I knew nothing about bikes at all. I couldn’t possibly buy a bike from someone who thought I was a twat, and I had a feeling “geezer” here was about to form that opinion of me.

“Oh yeah, what sort of trip are you planning?”

“I though I would ride up the country”.

“Oh yeah, up north a bit”.

“No, up THE country. I want to ride from the bottom to the top”.

“Crikey. Cool… Good on you!”. He hesitantly replied. I could see he was thinking the same think pretty much everyone else 5 seconds after I told them. You see I wasn’t exactly in prime physical form. I had lost a bit of weight recently but still looked thirty something, saggy and in sub average shape.

“Yeah, if I buy a bike from you will you show me how to use it?” I asked.

“You mean show you how to run the gears, and to maintain it? Sure thing.”

“No, I mean will you show me how to ride a bike.”

He stared for a bit. Laughed in a forced manner while eyeing me carefully to see if I was joking, then stared for a bit more. I can of course ride a bike, and after a while I let him off the hook. He look releived but I didn’t buy a bike from him.

I went to a few more shops after that, and learnt quite a bit, and eventually found my way into a local store, Rocket Bikes. They recommended a well priced bike and really good advice, and was relatively supportive of my plan. They put me on a bike they recommended and told me to ride it up some hills. I was a little apprehensive considering I hadn’t ridden a bike for further than 40 meters in 15 years or more, but agreed it was probably a good idea.

My first ride in one and a half decades didn’t go too well, but then I had my expectations set quite low. With helmet donned, and seat adjusted to my height I was ready for action. I had a quick instruction on how to use the gears, and breaks and I was off, excited. I sat outside the shop, on the saddle of my new mount, ready to go. I just needed to cross the road first without getting killed. I fiddled with the gears a bit, rolled my pedal back a bit to get maximum take-off as soon as the traffic parted, waited and then there was a gap. I was off! Apparently changing gears and then rolling backwards messes with the chain a little. Half way across the road the chain came off, and I was left dangling with legs spinning in the middle of the road, waiting for the van tearing down the road to hit me. Straddling the bar, I quickly tiptoed the bike to the other side of the road. Not a good start, but at lease I was still alive.

So after a quick self taught lesson on what to not do with your gears while stationary, I was off a second time. Cruising down the Kerikeri main street with a grin ear to ear, the wind in my hair and gaining speed. “It’s not so hard” I was thinking to myself. Then I came to the top of a hill, where the road disappeared down into a valley and then went up the other side. So far my journey had been flat, but that was all about to change. Wheeeeheeeeeee, I thought as I raced down, down, down. It was fun, I was going fast. The cars passing me seemed to do so in slow motion. A bug flew in my left eye but I didn’t want to take my hands off of the handlebars. I was gripping tight. I was feeling positive, right up to the point where I hit the hill going up the other side. My easily won speed going down quickly evaporated, and I found myself having to pedal, and pedal pretty hard. Panting and with burning legs I made it up my first hill. I paused at the top and gulped down half of my water as a reward. I was pleased I had made it so far, so I went on a quick tour of streets and areas of Kerikeri which I hoped had no monster hills.

The second hill I came to was much smaller, and having a bit of my energy sucked out of my legs from the last one, I was please when I managed to push myself up and over this one too. I passed people walking dogs, jogging and going for power walks, I wished them all a good morning. I wondered what I looked like, wearing a pair of old shorts, a t-shirt and some hiking shoes. I really didn’t look the part but I didn’t care.

At this point I was beginning the return trip back to the store. The valley I crossed at the start of my ride was waiting for me, and the slope going back up the other side was much steeper and longer. Still I was fairly optimistic as so far I hadn’t dismounted once.

Here is how that hill went.

I was single-mindedly focussed on making it up the hill. As I pushed my legs harder and harder, I could see the top beaconing me. The crest of the hill was waving at me in the heat, and seemed to be messing with me by getting further and further away. Someone once told me that pushing yourself was as much of a mental thing as it was a physical thing, so as my body started to talk to me and was saying “Okay, I think I have had enough now. Lets walk the rest” I was replying with, “Shut up you quitter, we are getting to the top of this hill”.

“I really think we should walk about now”, my body began to plead.

“I know you are lying and can do it you sad excuse for a body. We are going to the top!” I felt like Knight Rider and my body was KITT. I knew better, and all I needed to do was push the Turbo Boost button, and we would be sorted.

“Well if you don’t stop, I will have to make you, I am sorry to say” said my body. And it did. At this point the world screeched to a stop. I felt like I was swiming in glue, my legs unable to walk, and I hobbled off the bike and onto the sidewalk and towards a park bench a few meters away. I needed to sit down. One step, legs shaking, two steps, head spinning, and… vomit.

So that was my first ride. I expected it to go badly, I have to admit. I had no false illusions about the state of my fitness. After recovering on the park bench horizontal for 20 minutes, I eventually peeled myself off and walked to the top of the hill, and rode back to the bike shop. “How did you go”. “Fantastic” I lied.

The next day I did the same route again. This time no vomit, and I made it further up the final hill, and I didn’t have to mentally abuse my body to do it. The next day I did it again, and made better progress again. So I bought the bike, and even rode it home, which was almost twice the distance again with double the number of hills. Most I had to walk up, but no more vomit. I was getting better with the gears, and generally feeling better each day. I rode home from work a couple of days later, paced my self slower, made it up a couple of hills I didn’t before, and so it went.

The biggest challenge for me will be my fitness, and as long as I kept riding it would improve. If I rode as often as possible and made a little bit of progress each time, I increased the chances of success for my tour, and lessen the amount of pain I would have to endure at the early stages of the trip.

I now needed to organise all the other kit I would need to take with me. I would need to get some racks for my new steed, and some bags to carry stuff in. What other stuff would I need? A change of clothes, food, a tent? These were next on my list of things to organise. But for now I have a bike, which I can ride without falling off. That has to be progress.

Decisions are pretty easy things to make, it’s the consequences that are the real kicker. To make a decision, you just take in all the data you can collect, analyse it, eliminate the risks and then the decision will pretty much make itself. That’s the theory so here is how it went.

1 Year minus all the months when it will be too cold or hot minus how long will it take minus how long will it take me to get ready. Easy.

I needed to find out as much about bike touring as I possibly could quickly. So I googled some bike-ish keywords and came up with a number of different sites. A couple of commercial guided bike touring outfits came up, so they seemed the best place to start for information.

http://www.cyclenewzealand.com was a wealth of information, and gave me a good idea on how far I could expect to go, what I should take, and the types of bikes you can expect to ride. Likewise http://www.advsouth.co.nz and http://www.cyclehire.co.nz had good info and both had a really good run down on when to go. I figured I was in no worse shape than some of the tourists they must get on these tours. So I should be able to safely use their numbers.

One of the most important factors for the trip planning is the best time of year to travel Cycling the length of New Zealand can be done all year round, its just how wet and cold do you want to get? I figured I should expect to take 6 weeks to complete the journey. I could probably do it quicker, but I should have a good week up my sleeve for contingency, and tiki-tours. The best times of year looked to be either Spring or Autumn, when it will be cooler, but not cold, and less wet. As I will be starting in the South Island, I will need to have a good 3 weeks clear of any uncomfortable conditions. If I start in Spring, I don’t want to be baking in summer heat when I get to the upper North Island. If I start in Autumn then I don’t want to be freezing my nuts off as I pass Mt Cook. So early spring or Early Autumn looks good. But in 3 weeks on each island the conditions shouldn’t change drastically.

So I narrowed down the launch dates to be March – April or October – December.

How much prep time will I need. If I am to go in Autumn, what will I need to do to get ready? If it’s Spring, I will have plenty of time, but will it be too far out, and do I run the risk of busying myself with something else. 9 months is a lot of time for some excuse not to do it to materialise. We have some big projects in the pipeline with my business so who knows what could be happening then.

As I talk to some people about my trip, them knowing too well my sporting prowess or lack of it, have suggested I take a year to get into shape. But then others say that the first week on the bike will be enough on the job training I will need. I used to be quite fit, a long long time ago, but I was fit. I could run like Forrest, and I seemed to have pretty good stamina. But of course that was 2 children, a wife, a career and 10,000 beers ago.

So I knew I had an issue two months ago when I was toying with the idea, when I stepped on the scales and looked at 96kg and rising. Everyone is used to the slightly chubby (okay very fucken chubby) version of Vaughan. But in the last couple of months I have dropped 10kg and 4 belt notches. So that is phase one of my fitness program already under way. And the progress so far has been good. I have gone from fear of star jumps because I hated the flapping noise my man-breasts made, to leaping and bounding over fences, couches and small children. I have gone from using the “Jesus” handles in the car as a brace to thrust myself out of the car with, to almost jumping into cars Dukes of Hazzard style through the window. I knew my biggest risk in this whole journey was my weight, and set my target of losing 8kg by New Year’s Eve, or else forget the whole thing. Well I achieved that and better. So the next goal is to be able to ride a bike for 20 minutes without vomiting. To do all of this I would of course need a bike.

If I go in Autumn I will need one, like SOON. If Spring, then I can take my time. What type of bike, and gear ,and clothes and… how long should I acquaint myself with it before I’m on a plane to Stewart Island. If I go for Autumn, will 4-5 weeks be enough?

I was leaning towards Autumn at this stage. If I wanted to do this I should do it sooner rather than later. So the last step was to check my calendar. Damn. I have a conference in April and a Kyle who works with me is on holiday in March. Plus there is a project I need to complete for a customer all before then. Could I do it later in Autumn? If I want to do it now, I need to know what the conditions will be like then.

So a quick visit to NIWA, the National Institute of Weather and Atmospheric research, gave me all the stats I needed. How much rain, and how hot will it be in each centre as I pass through. I puch this into a trusty Google Spreadsheet. Next I trace a route on Google Maps which gives me road distances. From this I figure out I can probably ride 70kms a day. I lay out the number of days between each town, and viola, I have a route, with a time and what the weather will be like when I get there. 42 days in total for the trip. I punch in my start date and it tells me where I can expect to be on which date. And after playing around with spreadsheet magic a bit, I quickly see that my conference in Auckland will be exactly when I am passing through, IF I leave in March. If I take 4 days out for the conference, that pushes my trip out to 47 days, and that’s with plenty of rest days. I will be back home by the end of April. It is doable.

The first or second week of March has now become my target. 4-5 weeks to get ready. Is that too little? I can probably push it out further but it will be getting colder and I could miss the conference, besides I can always fall back on the October option. Go hard or go home, someone once said. It wasn’t me, but it is now my new motto. I will be taking my laptop to blog and keep in touch with the family, and so I will work as I go for a couple of hours every day. Riding will be excellent thinking time, and I can keep in touch with the office everyday. It will be a little harder, but not impossible.

So thats how I did it. Easy huh? Yeah, now comes the hard part. With a launch date pretty fixed, this week I need to organise a bike… and a wee vomit.

Two weeks ago we were camping up at Whatuwhiwhi, our annual pilgrimage to the Top 10 holiday park, for swimming, sunning, and having less showers than you would normally get away with. We were well relaxed after 5 days camping, and I planned to take the family out for a fun day, get them in the right mood for me to announce my new resolution. We would take a leisurely trip up to “The Cape”, Cape Reinga, the northern most point of our fair country, then finish up by doing one of Mel’s favourite things, pulling into a winery for dinner and drinks before rolling back to the camp ground. Well things didn’t go exactly to plan.

First of all the trip was longer than I thought. We spent an age getting there and the kids got a bit restless. Holly for some reason wanted desperately to play on a playground and could not see the value in going to the top of the country, and Mel, to appease her, told her there would be a really big playground on the way. At this stage we had passed Kaitaia, which was pretty much the last point of civilisation heading north, so playgrounds were not a plenty. We did find one but it just didn’t pass the grade, so we moved on, to my delight as all I wanted was to get to the top, give everyone a treat, then make a b-line back to the winery just up the road from our camp, and make my announcement.

I have always been fascinated with the Cape, and it has always been a spiritual place for me. The last time I visited was just after I met Mel. We had met, fell in love, and Mel was about to leave the country and me to go on her OE. So we went on a road trip north, along the same path, and found ourselves about as far as you can go north without getting wet. On that trip when I got to the top, I made the decision to follow Mel overseas. On my return from the Cape I quit my job, sold all of my worldly possessions, and bought a plane ticket. This time, the plan was to cement my resolution in place by telling my family.

After much wailing and disappoint about the lack of playgrounds, we got there. Somewhere along the journey north it was explained to Holly that we were going to the very very tip of New Zealand and we would have to be careful we didn’t fall off. It was of course a joke at the time, one meant to instil fascination within her and her sister, that this place was really special and a just a little bit extreme, so they should pay attention and develop some character. Unfortunately when we got there, the wind had picked up and the usually beautiful stroll from the car park to the lighthouse marking the tip became a little distressing to Holly. She was very aware of the fact that she was at the very edge of the country, and a four year old can obsess about things a little, and in her mind she was very scared of falling off. While we walked to the lighthouse I thought I would distract her a little by asking her why lighthouses were important. She of course didn’t know, so I happily told her the story of lighthouses. “Hurrah”, I thought, I will go into detail, drag it out and by the time I am complete we would be at the lighthouse, we could take some photos, I could point out the directions of Australia, America and any other countries the kids knew, and then we could walk back to the car. I must point out also, that I left my shoes in the car, declaring proudly and loudly at the time “I’m a fucken Northlander, we DONT wear shoes”, and the path to the lighthouse was a new red stone chip path. As the soles of my feet began to get a little tender, I explained to Holly that primarily lighthouses were there to show ships where the land was, so big tankers coming to New Zealand would see the light and not bump into the top. This was followed by increased screams. Bemused I asked Holly what exactly she was scared of.

“Falling off”, She explained.

“Don’t be silly” I replied, “we won’t fall off”

“But what if a ship comes and hits New Zealand, and knocks everyone off?”

I could see there was no way to rationally explain basic physics to a four year old, or what a GPS was, so I picked up the pace, hopping down the red stone path and we finally made it. Holly clung to the lighthouse while I whisked around and took some quick snaps to record the event. I wanted a photo of me to use in an album, perhaps to document the start of my new adventure. Instead, I felt sorry for everyone else who was enjoying a beautiful day at the cape, so whisked up Holly and Summer and started carrying them back the car. Holly eventually decided she would walk with Mel, not me, probably afraid I might tell her stories of earthquakes or tsunamis. Summer however had decided she was not walking at all, as a almost three year old does, so I carried her with feet near bleeding, putting on my staunchest Northlander face for passers by. “Caw, you must have tough feet” some would exclaim. I would just suck in my stomach, grin and give them one of those winks, you know the ones, the “oh yeah baby, glass, burning coals, you name it no sweat” kind of winks. I felt like such a complete dick.

With everyone packed in the car, we started heading back. The day had got on quite a bit, the weather clouded in a bit and it became clear the winery was not on the cards today. So the kids eventually dropped off to sleep in the car, and I wondered to myself if today was really the day to tell them.

“Mel, I have made a decision” I announced abruptly. Mel looked at me, and I got the feeling she was worried. “I have decided to ride the length of New Zealand on a bike” I continued.

“A bicycle?” she queried.

“Yep, all the way.” This was followed by a minute of silence. I guessed correctly and continued “You think its a bad idea”

“I think you are fucken crazy” she explained.

“I thought you would” I said. “It is just something I want to do. It’s not a big deal, it’s not like I am going to sail the world on a windsurfer or anything.”

“You’re not fit. How long will it take? What about us?”

“You mean you and the kids? Well it won’t be forever, probably about a month maybe.” and we discussed some basic maths calculating how fast, far and fucken crazy I was. The thing of course is, that riding the length of New Zealand is not exactly an extreme feat. People have done the globe on a bike. For the most part, State Highway One runs the length of the country, and it is a sealed, comfortable road. I would pass through the majority of our major towns and cities on the way, and there was no threat of being eaten by wild animals. Of course what Mel was most afraid of was me. I was 34, overweight, unfit and hadn’t ridden a bike for at least 16 years. But that was kind of the point. I was all those things, and I didn’t like it.

I knew it would take me a while to do it. The month or so riding was only one part. I would have to get fit. I would have to organise my business so I could take a leave of absence for a while. I would have to be away from my wife and kids for the longest period we have ever been apart, ever. It was all kind of the point. Now while thinking about my resolution in the weeks I pondered if this was some mid-life crisis. It wasn’t, otherwise I would be dead at 68 and that was far too young for me. I had just been through 3 years of extreme stress in my previous business venture during which I became a horrible workaholic. I wasn’t going though any crisis, I just wanted to do it. It would get me fit, and away from my work, two things I promised my family I would do when I emerged from the crater from the meteor that was my workaholism. I would ride a bike and become quite simply a better me. I thought of it as insurance against a mid-life crisis.

“I am not talking about something crazy you know. I could always do it on roller-skates you know”

“I know, two and a half thousand kilometres isn’t crazy I suppose.”

“I know, to make it challenging, I will bike AROUND New Zealand, so instead of just one way, ride around the coast”. This was followed by a stern look, so I decided to stick with the original plan. “I am starting from the bottom tho” I explained. “Otherwise it will be downhill all the way and that would be too easy.”

I would start from Stewart Island, and then essentially make my way home. I thought if I started at the top, I would pass Kerikeri where I live, on day four or five, and I figured I would probably be pretty much had-it at that point, ready to bail. However if I was had-it and in Gore, at the other end of the country, I might feel a little more motivated to keep going.

So lets just say Mel was not thrilled, but when asked if she would support me, she of course said yes. “If this is something you want to do, then sure, we will support you in doing it”. I sensed that she probably thought I would not actually go through with it, but I knew this was something I wasn’t about to cop-out of. And so it is, I have to figure out the rest now, like when to go, what I have to do to prepare, how long it will take, where will I sleep and all of those things. I kind of like the idea of couch surfing my way up the country, so I can meet a whole raft of interesting people to boot. I had planned to sleep in a tent, but the couch surfing was Mel’s idea. I think I will also weave in a few detours, to catch up with some people from my past on the way.

So now the rest of the world knows. If you have words of support, please send them my way. Tips or where to get really good bike gear would also be appreciated. Anyone know how far I can expect to ride in a day? Well, I can say this. It wont be fun to start with, but I am damn sure it will build some character