It's not the years - it's the mileage

Hello blogland!

Well you’ll have to forgive my lack of posts over the past week, but its back to busy times in my world. Amongst all of the filled days there is many an exciting tidbit to report on. I’m seconds away from hitting the road to start researching Cycling New Zealand for Lonely Planet. It’s going to be a great book for all sorts of reasons – both personal and professional. It’s a great excuse to get out and amongst my adopted home of NZ and scratch under the surface of some top destinations. Add onto that the prospect of getting to spend a good stack of time on the bike and it starts to verge on the “I can’t believe I get paid for this” territory. but before you start cursing me with the jealous rage you reserve for celebrity look-alikes and pro hockey players, remember that I do have to write the longest ever “what I did on my summer vacation” essay in history – 160,000 words is a lot, no matter how you spin it…

Also creeping up into the subconscious is the next trip over the sea – in just 3 short weeks I’m off to Japan! I wish I could say that I’m staying for a lengthy adventure, but this is a fleeting in-transit visit. I’ve got a week in country to eat sushi, ride bullet trains, look at big temples, feel really tall, sing karaoke and get lost amongst some pretty other worldly culture. Should be tops – and fear not I’ll be sure to spill the details on my cultural shocking experience – I may keep the karaoke to myself, but we’ll just have to see…

Japan is a stop off on the way to Canada – I’ll be in the great white north for the month of July – checking out the Stampede, visiting the fam and getting a second helping of summer (actually, it’s about my 4th in the past year, but who’s counting!).

With all this on the radar you’d think that I’d be running like a headless chicken around the show – but I’ve actually had the go-slows for the past few days. On Saturday I competed in a fantastic adventure race with my frequent adventure co-conspirator, Christian Martin. The race was a 12hour Rogaine event – for those not in the know, a Rogaine is a cross between orienteering and a scavenger hunt. You are given a topographical map with checkpoints marked on it. To help you find the checkpoints you are given a cryptic-crossword style clue to help you zero in on the exact location. All that’s left to do is cover the ground on foot and find the checkpoints, recording the codeword that’s printed at each stop along the way. Although it sounds easy, it’s the mileage and more accurately the elevation between the points that really adds up. The race lasts 12 hours and you can choose what checkpoints you go to, what route you take and how fast you travel. There is no way that a single team could possibly get to all the points, so there is a certain amount of strategy involved.

We gave it a good nudge and ran, climbed, huffed and puffed for the full 12 hours and were more then a bit excited for the clock to strike 9pm and call it done. Great day out in the mountains – despite the near zero temperature at night (yes, half the race was in the pitch dark) and the seemingly endless array of hills that we had to climb. We’re already looking forward to the NZ Rogaine championships in November, the Kepler Challenge Ultra-off-road-Marathon in December and some other long term goals that I’m not going to reveal just yet – watch this space!

Take it easy out there and remember these rather fitting words…

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did...So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain

Cheers
Scott