Today was a day off, at least from traveling. We spent most of the daylight hours slowly disassembling our bikes and packing them into the Crateworks boxes, along with the rest of our gear.
For anyone curious to see how two tandem bicycles can fit into three Crateworks boxes – one long, two short – and still pass the airline weight requirements, this hyperspeed video shows exactly how we did it:
In the afternoon we took a break to walk to a truly horrible French restaurant – our first seriously bad dining experience in New Zealand. Perhaps the country was throwing a tantrum because we were about to leave!
Fun fact: New Zealand has more cute roadside ponds per capita than any place else in the southern hemisphere.
New Zealand is awash in cute roadside ponds!
(Note: Today’s Fun Fact has not been peer-reviewed.)
We slept in late, and checked out of the Plateau Lodge even later. The 12-mile mountain hike we did yesterday was probably slowing us down. What a surprise!
Nevertheless, we were in good spirits. It was all downhill to Taurmaranui and the weather was fantastic. Plus I was all stocked up on dark chocolate:
Roadside chocolate break!
In the photo you can see the New Zealand flag attached to the bike. It was part of my fabulous plan to boost our visibility to drivers, but in retrospect it was mostly a nuisance. If it was smaller I could have attached it to a pole like recumbent riders usually do. Oh well… Wisdom for the next trip.
Knowing how much we obsessed about weight, it’s odd that I didn’t just discard the flag somewhere along the way. But on the other hand, when you’re visiting a country, you shouldn’t throw their flag in the trash – that’s just rude!
There's the mountain we hiked near two days ago - Mt Ngauruhoe - free of clouds for the first time in a week.
During the chocolate break I looked back to the east and saw Mt Ngauruhoe – free of clouds for the first time in a week. The weather wasn’t that clear yesterday when we hiked it. It’s true what the locals say: The mountain makes its own weather system, and it’s only sometimes related to what goes on around it.
Looking to the north I saw what looked like a smaller, flatter version of Ngauruhoe.
I believe that plateau is called Mt Komokoriri.
(That's based on a guess from looking at www.topomap.co.nz .)
In the evening I got obsessed and spent an entire hour on the laptop, browsing around topograpic maps trying to identify the plateau. My best guess was that it’s Mt Komokoriri?
Since it was the last day we would be riding cross-country, I decided to do what I did for the first day, and record some video. This time I attached the camera to the front of the recumbent instead of my helmet. “Now it’ll be nice and steady!” I declared. Nope. Every single tiny ridge on the pavement made the camera jitter like crazy. It looked like I was riding a bicycle with square wheels.
About halfway through the ride we stopped to chat with some outdoorsmen walking along the road.
Friends we met while cycling down from National Park, including Mark the photographer.
The guy on the right is Mark Watson, a nature photographer and fellow cycling enthusiast. I barraged him with questions about photography equipment and techniques, which he answered gracefully.
Stopping for photos of a mountain and seeing smoke in the air
Second video:
Checking in: I’d grown quite a beard.
Resting up after an easy day's riding!
I spent a non-trivial amount of vacation time like this, futzing with photos. Fun!
Odd sockets and switches:
This is how you know the hotel was built a while ago!
In the morning the receptionist rang us on the hotel phone, and told us that the boat ride was definitely cancelled. We grumbled a bit, slept a while longer, and then decided to spend the day walking around Whakatane instead.
Whakatane is hemmed in on the east side by a long arm of brush-covered cliffs. In front of the cliffs is a low peninsula of land that pinches the ocean like a giant lobster claw, into a long narrow harbor. The Kohi Point Scenic Reserve encompasses the area beyond the cliffs, and the Nga Tapuwae o Toi Walkway track runs along the cliffs and provides lovely scenic views down into the harbor.
The Nga Tapuwaeo Toi walkway is where we're headed today, since the weather has prevented us from going on a snorkel trip with dolphins.
The Nga Tapuwaeo Toi walkway is where we’re headed today, since the weather has prevented us from going on a boat trip.
Anybody know what these are? They inflate like balloons and then detach, and seeds fall out.
Very pretty around here!
Even the steep ascent along the road to the trailhead is gorgeous, with plenty of odd vegetation to inspect!
Good news!
The government is serious about restoring the area for the eventual release of kiwi.
Intersting signage.
Dogs are especially frowned upon here, for the damage they can do to native birds, kiwi included.
The locals are still trying to eliminate the unwelcome predators from this area.
In fact, the area has been sewn with poison, aimed at eliminating the local invasive predators, and the poison is a risk to dogs as well. If some arrogant vacationer brings their dog along this trail and the dog drops dead a few hours later, I imagine they won’t find much sympathy from the locals…
Here's the trailhead! Kerry will be our guide!
The trail has these nifty little stairways here and there.
Here at the trailhead!
Here’s an example of one of the traps mentioned in the sign:
An example of one of the traps mentioned in the sign.
Every time I go on a long trip, there is some new shift in technology that changes the way I relate to the journey. Last time, while crossing the US, it was mobile mapping software. Everywhere I went, I not only knew where I was and what was around me, but what the locals thought about it. Everything had a star rating and a couple of reviews attached – hotels, restaurants, museums, parks, monuments, grocery stores, even graveyards – and often had photos as well, uploaded by patrons. I didn’t even need an itinerary, and I could still see interesting stuff and stay in nice places most of the time.
I think the big change for this New Zealand trip has been video recording. I had a video recorder on the last trip – a Countour GPS – but it was a complete pain to use. This time I brought a Garmin Virb with a dive case, and a tiny tripod for my phone to do time-lapse videos, and even though there was a learning curve for both, I got some really nice results.
So, I got to snorkel around the Poor Knights Islands, then a day later I got to see details I missed in the recording. I used the phone to get a nice time-lapse of us putting the bikes together, then used the Virb to get a nice time-lapse of our first ride around Whangarei. And now, on Day 12, I got to take some really neat ultra-stabilized time-lapse videos of our walk along the trail.
Checkit!
Smooth like buttah. I took these with an application called “Hyperlapse“. Here’s one descending the trail in the same area, later on the day:
It was a lot of fun taking these, and the six or seven others that I took as I was futzing around. The software uses the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer to track exactly how you tilt and shake the camera as you’re recording, providing very accurate information to stabilize the image. Plus, the faster pace makes the videos less boring. Heh heh.
Reviewing time-lapse movies shot on the trail!
Here I am reviewing stabilized time-lapse movies on the trail! Couldn’t do that a few years ago. Had to take it home and crunch it in a video rig for a while.
The amount of layered greenery here is enchanting.
We were enchanted by the amount of layered greenery, and the gentle misting of rain, and the complicated patterns of birdsong ringing out in all directions – and sometimes very close at hand.
A nice rest-stop a few miles up on the trail
After a while we encountered the first of several rest stops, but didn’t linger very long. More to explore!
Praying mantises are so cute! Look at those little folded arms, all ready to snap at some unsuspecting bug! KACHOW!!
Praying mantises are so cute! Look at those little folded arms, all ready to snap at some unsuspecting bug! KACHOW!!
One of the giant ferns in the process of uncurling
One of the many many giant ferns in the process of uncurling.
Tai Chi Dork strikes again! This time, looking over the Whakatane inlet.
Tai Chi Dork strikes again! This time, looking over the Whakatane inlet. That’s Moutohara Island, a.k.a. Whale Island, in the background.
We decided to turn back at this point, because the trail snaked along for another 20 miles and we didn’t have enough daylight to complete it.
Okay... Can somebody tell me why there appears to be a ramscoop-style air intake on this vehicle? Or is that something else?
Okay… Back in town, we saw this. Can somebody tell me why there appears to be a ramscoop-style air intake on this vehicle? Or is that something else? Is it for fording rivers?
We ended the day in style, with a movie and thai food. Since the weather was still messy we would probably miss the dolphin snorkel trip. Perhaps we should just leave town early next morning?
So you’ve arrived somewhere, and you’ve unpacked your bicycle(s) from the Crateworks box(es), and now you want to send the boxes to your destination? Sounds great. But what if you’ve forgotten how they fold up?
It seems straightforward enough. A Crateworks box only has four plastic pieces and three cardboard pieces – the tandem box slightly more – plus some straps and padding. But if you’re paranoid about fitting things together the “intended” way for shipping (as I am), some photo documentation is helpful.
This is what it looks like to unpack a shipped Crateworks box. To re-pack one, just follow the photos in reverse.
It arrives like this, in a cardboard box 54 x 32 x 6 inches. Interestingly, the box for the tandem/recumbent version is exactly the same size as the single version.
And here’s what it looks like to unpack:
And, just to round things out, here’s what a bunch of Crateworks boxes look like on an airport terminal scale:
And here’s what those same three boxes look like, folded up for shipping and taped thoroughly shut:
Bike shipping boxes all wrapped up for sending to New Plymouth.
We left them in the hotel lobby and the shipping company picked them up for us the next day. Very handy!
It’s possible to ship the Crateworks boxes without using an enclosing box, if you use enough tape – (we did this very thing in New Zealand) – but the above photos show a serious problem with this. The top and bottom ends of the compressed box are open. Unless you cover them thoroughly, with tape or some other material, all the panels inside will slide easily out.
I really think Crateworks should include an extra rectangle of foldable plastic on the long sides of the bottom piece, so we could fold it to cover the ends of the compressed version, holding all the other parts inside. Then we wouldn’t need to go through an entire roll of packing tape just to seal the ends.
For some reason, it’s nearly impossible to find one that’s sold in the United States, let alone manufactured here. But Bear Paw Wilderness Designs has stepped in to fill the gap. I had such a hard time finding these that it’s worth posting about!
