Meeting the Cameron's

Day two and I rode further south to Hamilton. (Given that I'm generally heading south I suppose most days I'll be riding south!)

The first part of the ride was up and over the Bombay Hills. It's long been argued that Aucklanders think the country ends here and the rest of us are a bit wary of crossing them to get to Auckland home to the Jafas (Just Another F***ing Aucklander) but Auckland's not too bad and the people are pretty good too. At least nowadays they don't win all of the rugby! Anyway, the Bombay Hills are bloody steep. The motorway follows a reasonable route but is closed to cyclists so I struggled up to Bombay and then headed out on Razorback Rd towards Pokeno. It's a series of steep uphills and even steeper downhills. After one climb I flopped to the ground and tried to reassure myself that it could only get better. After the next downhill I nearly had to stop and clean out my bike shorts - with the bike fully laden the brakes weren't quite enough to slow me down. Once at Pokeno though it flattens off and there's a cyclelane painted on the side of the Expressway. The surface is great and the cars and trucks are kept far enough away.

It's amazing what you see when biking along. At one point someone had dropped a whole lot of forks. About twenty dotted the roadside over the space of two k's. How they got there I've no idea, but it was a classic case of "fork dropping." (My friend Emily created this phrase to refer to people trying to out do the last persons 'amazing' story with one of their own as "fork dropping.")




At Rangiriri I stopped for a feed of chips. They were not the best so far - definitely second class and overpriced. From Rangiriri I crossed from the main highway side of the Waikato river to the western side and enjoyed a tailwind and very little traffic, and most importantly virtually no hills. This continued through to Huntly and then there were a few rolling hills to Ngaruawahia where I swapped to the eastern side of the river (as the main flow of traffic swapped to the western side) and rode down River Road straight into Hamilton.


But first more bizarre sights on the way......


Hamilton is the capital of the Waikato and the heart of New Zealand's huge dairy industry. It's also home to some of New Zealand's great rowers and I had the privilege of staying with the Cameron family whose son Matt had just coxed the Hamilton Boys' High School rowing eight to winning the Maadi Cup, the top prize in NZ schools rowing.

The cameron's are an amazing family and incredibly hospitable. I'd been introduced to them through Ma and BJ at the Snake Park in Tanzania; Ma saying "you should go and visit Lachie. You two would really get on." Not only did they put me up for the night and feed me, but Lachie's wife, Netta, through my dirty cycling clothes in the wash and made me a terrific packed lunch to take away!


Here they are minus Matt who was off at 6am to go rowing AGAIN.



The ride to Hamilton was good and peppered with several myPod songs, but most fun was today's hit "It's not a bad day for it..."