How this whole thing started

About midway through a long winter, with what seemed like the worst surf on record for years, my good friend Stu Williams had had enough. He informed me one day while we were working out at the plant nursery we both were employed by that he was going to New Zealand. I was kind of taken back, because I'd never even thought of taking a surf trip there, and he said he wanted to go for about 6 months. I went home that night and looked up some info about NZ and found it to be extremely interesting, and it sounded even better considering the lack of waves and good weather in Oregon. I tentatively made plans in my head to keep saving money I already had planned for some unknown trip and add on to it to make it to NZ. Long story short, we decided that we'd take off close to our winter here in Oregon the next year, and would start our trip during their summer, hopefully skipping the majority of long stormy weeks at home.

Then came the idea for biking. Actually it was more of an issue of how do we stretch this trip out to last as long as we wanted. By now we had realistically planned for 3-4 months, but we couldn't figure out how to afford moving around the island much, with petrol prices up around $10 a gallon there. One night while discussing the trip with my dad, he suggested biking. That's all we needed to hear, and our tickets were booked, and plans arranged. Our friend Zac Booth happened to be there during this discussion, and the idea got him so stoked he took all his saved up money and bought a ticket as well.

7 months later and Stu has left (yesterday, Tuesday the 29th of September) already. Zac is due to leave October 28th and I leave November 2nd. Zac and I are still discussing final prep plans and trying to get all our gear together, while Stu pretty much just went for it. I'll update on the progress of everything as the trip comes closer together!