Fear and Loatheing in 1112

The first full day in New Zealand was probably the longest day in all of history. We're were both awakened at around 4am by our Hostel-(mate)  coming home from the bar/club after a night of local watering hole cheap alcohol night. I can only imagine what that was like. He's a cool dude, so it's all good.  The way the hostel is set up resembles a cool dorm room with a whole bunch of people that don't speak the same language as you. We're constatly bombarded with offers for cheap drinks and free pizza at Globe bar. having been to college once, that is one exerience that I never want to see again.  There are bound to be douches there just like college, but at least they speak a different language.  There is a kitchen in this place, so you can imagine what that must be like. Zac and I had a discussion about who in the kitchen spent the least amount of money on their meals that evening. I thought we had everyone pegged until we spoke to an individual that bought a package of imitation ramen noodles from the vending machine in the hallway for a dollar. That is efficent traveling. I think he was french, but he didn't say enough to convince me of that. Anyway, after the little bit of sleep interruption that was experienced, the day began at 7:30am local time and was followed with a hearty breakfast that can be classified as only the essentials that need to be consumed to facilitate a lengthy bike ride. Our intentions were to make it to the big MTB park in the west part of the island known as Woodhill Forrest. After a cruise uphill and a few miles of burning legs we arrived at a bike shop out of town and were instructed on where might be a good location to thumb with our bikes. After about a half-hour, we got frustrated and though we'd ride a little closer to try to find someone. No luck there either. We then found ourselves on our way to a few overlooks and then to Waitakere. The cool part is that there were tracks(trails) all over that place and huge detailed maps as to their whereabouts. The down side? No bikes alowed! WTF!!!!! So what did Zac and I do? Rode it anyway. We are true single speeders.  After a sweet warm up of super tight single track covered in gravel with a few tricky turns and swooping rolls, the real fun began. More slop and muck than your great grandmothers kisses. We're trudging through this quagmire and thinking to ourselves: how are we going to explain this to the rangers if we're stopped? A little bit of back tracking later and we find ourselves looking at wall climb after wall climb to get out of this place. But we did find a huge tree to take a rest at. After finally gettting back out to the road, we then realized the daunting task of getting back to the city. We ended up on the public transit system. Total milage for the day we estimated to be 55km. (we're having to think in metric speak now). The most important part of this entry today is the recognition of the day of birth of another member of the beard crew, Ryan Puckett. Happy birthday Buddy.