The Rail Trail...

This is a 120 kilometer bike ride that I didn't actually go on. I was the chauffeur to get the other bikers to the rail trail. So Lindsay and I had a lovely drive up to Queenstown (again) and got Ferg Burgers (again). We also wrote research papers we had to write for class in 2 hours for the low price of $6. We were using a computer lab. That night we drove half the way to Dunedin and parked our van on the side of the road and slept there for the night. It was just on the road in front of someones house. Cars kept on honking and waking us up throughout the night. The next morning we woke up drove 2 minutes down the road and found a pull off and rest stop area for sleeping. We were a little annoyed to say the least. Anyway then we drove to Dunedin to get these awesome striped thermals that are different striped patters on the arms and neck and sleeves, and the pants have different legs. They are pretty incredible.

Then the real adventures started. And sorry I don't have any pictures of this, but it was slightly traumatic. So. I was driving little to fast around a sharp turn and we ended up swerving slightly and hitting a ditch. We got a flat tire from said accident. So then we were stranded on the side of the road and we called the rental place and they said we were to far out to come and fix the car. Well this is indeed not good. Lindsay and I managed to get the tire out from underneath the car and then were staring in stupidity at the jack, trying to figure out how it worked.

Then luckily a lovely gentleman named Roger stopped by to help us. I kid you not he looked exactly like Bilbo Baggins. He talked like Bilbo and he was short like Bilbo and had hobbit feet. He was totally a hobbit. Which was awesome. He was super nice and funny though. He kept apologizing to us for cussing which he was doing at the cars taking the corner to fast. Very funny man and so nice and helpful. His friend helped us to change the tire as well, but I don't remember his name. They were so lovely and helpful though.

Then Lindsay and I went and picked up the others from the end of the rail trail, where they were extremely tired. They hadn't done the whole thing, because they had a limited time but they had still biked about 50 or so miles I believe? Anyway they were extremely tired. But we were too far away from Invercargill to go home on the spare so we had to see if we could get the tire fixed. We stopped in a little town called Middlemarch and were directed to the Okie Pokey and ask to see Steve. Thinking it would be an actual tire shop we turned down the road only to find a man standing in his garage, with some equipment working on tires. So I went up and asked him if he was Steve. It was super hard to understand anything he said, and the only words I really got were the cuss words. Which he said often so that was something I suppose. Anyway In his mumble he answered yes and said he'd work on the tire. It only took him 30 minutes to fix it and luckily the tire wasn't punctured, so it only cost me $30 to fix the tire.

Then if that wasn't adventurous enough, we were at a quarter of a tank of gas in Middlemarch. We should have filled up. We didn't. So we were about 25 minutes or so away from the next town when the empty light went on. Slightly panicked that we were going to run out of gas, I started to put the car in neutral whenever we were going down a hill in order to preserve gas. So we are all holding our breathes and pull into a little tiny town, pull into the one gas station, and it's closed. Extra panicked we went next door where there was a little house, hoping the owner lived there (they didn't). We did however meet a nice couple from Scotland who offered to come help us out if we ran out of gas before the next town. Luckily we made it to town, to the gas station and arrived back in Invercargill safely. It was certainly an adventure though.