Riding in the Rain

Kristen writes;

We're in Rangiora, about 3o km north of Christchurch. We took three days to do the trip from Karen and Glen's up to this rather quaint town and two of them it rained pretty steady all day.
There are four things that make me want to throw this bike in the ditch: 1. Round abouts. 2. Trucks (otherwise known as lorries). 3. Rain. 4. Headwind.
Round abouts are in every town and are not the easiest thing to maneuver on a bike, let alone with a trailer and watching Erika take a few of them have made me cringe.
Some of the trucks that pass us by have such a wind gust with them that it nearly drags you into their wake- you could die that way!
The rain wouldn't be so bad if it stayed warm the whole time and our rain gear was actually as waterproof as rain gear is supposed to be... Our jackets have let us down in this department a bit and that can get frustrating.
Wind is the devil and on this island it always seems to be blowing in the wrong direction, no matter what direction you are going.

Still, the trip was a nice one. We found a place to copy off the pictures on my camera so we have an empty card once again, we took a bike path that took us off the road for several miles and through the beautiful country, we stopped at a great truck stop that had a very warm dining room with great hamburgers to refuel us, everyone we've stopped to ask directions of has been absolutely great- even if they have no idea where we are going and we've realized how very funny the two of us can be when left alone for long periods of time. We've decided it's good that there isn't someone else to gauge our humor as it might not measure up if there were others to judge.
After two wet days we showed up at a campground as the sun came out full steam and everything, including the two of us, was able to dry out before we went to bed that night. The campground also had wild blackberries and we had a delicious dessert of them that night!

We went to church the next morning at the Catholic church in town and afterwards were invited to lunch by a very nice mixed family (American,her - Kiwi,him). They were very sweet, they had four kids which was a bit much for us after not spending time with children for several days but good conversation and nice to hear from another American that Kiwi's are just more exercise directed than we generally are. (They have their first duathlon in the third year of school! First triathlon in the fourth!) They suggest that we should be able to make it fifty to a hundred km a day and we gasp a little bit! Our plan is thirty and sometimes that seems like a lot.

So we've been here at our second hosts for four days. Fons and Ellis are from Holland and came over about twenty two years ago and have been working on this property for about eight years after giving up their butcher business! They've kept us busy! We've learned how to trim tomato plants growing hydroponically (they look like trees they grow so long and are strung up so high!), weeded beautifully laid out raised beds of beets, carrots, asparagus, basil, and what they call silverbeet, dug out cemented poles in one of the 'tunnel houses' and done up the work in their backyard, which is beautifully kept. It's a bit different than our last hosts. We have a separate building to sleep in with an attached bathroom and small kitchenette which is nice but it's not exactly the same welcoming family atmosphere. It's been a bit of a transition but we've come to appreciate the way this works, we're just glad we had the experience we did with our first host family!

We've made sure to keep up biking every day and of course find it a lot easier when we don't have all our luggage behind us! We have another two days here before pushing on and taking about ten days to get up to Blenheim.