The Latest Bicycle Touring News from DownTheRoad.org

Sept 15 - 30

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Auckland. We are in no rush to get touring again, our first priority while we are here is to finish our second book, besides the weather is cold and wet at the moment. We stayed with a couple from the www.warmshowers.org list and instead of staying for a few nights we ended up house sitting the cats for 10 days too. I highly recommend joining the warmshowers.org list, a list for cyclists willing to take in other cyclists from around the world.

We had plenty to do while in Auckland and one of them was to fix the bikes. When I pulled my bike out of the box, always a tense moment, I found that my big chain ring had been dragged across the floor (both my wheels were off the frame) and the chain ring needed to be filed. We went in search of a bike shop and found an awesome one in the downtown area near the sky city tower. The name of the bike shop is Bicyclette, www.bicyclette.com, we originally went there to buy a long sleeve wool jersey for Tim and found a great mechanic and staff too. We still had not found a bike shop that would install our headsets for the Koga Myiata World Traveler. This bike takes a funky headset that requires notching the crown to get the headset out (not my area of expertise, I just want the bike to ride well) we had carrying the headsets for many months. Anyway we had our headsets and our instructions from Eric in Santa Barbara and now we had a mechanic to fix it. Our bikes were clean, we cleaned them with a toothbrush to get them through quarantine, and ready to get worked on. During an inspection of Tim’s wheels we found cracks in his rim so it was time to replace the rear wheel as well. Better here then some little town in the middle of nowhere. Tim also had to replace his bottom bracket and front brake cable. The bikes came out of the shop running like new, I highly recommend the mechanics at Bicyclette.

While we were in Auckland I looked up a travel doctor, Tim was still not right (not that he complained, I just knew) he was fatigued, tired, and hungry all the time, and I had to get down to the bottom of his problem. Back in May, I dragged him to a doctor, he tested positive for bacteria and was treated with an antibiotic, he seemed to get better for a little while but was still having intestinal discomfort and looked run down to me. It was a little work to get Tim to the doctor, but I am such a pest he went along to appease me. We talked with the doctor for an hour, we discussed the countries we had been too and she reviewed Tim’s results from May. She added another test for a parasite ( flat or tape worms) or schistosomiasis which required a urine sample for three days in a row collected between noon and three pm. hmmm I guess they are hard to detect. The results came back positive, I about cried with relief and grief at the same time. Relieved we now knew what was wrong and grief for not finding it sooner, Tim has suffered with this for over a year and a half and possibly longer, since we traveled through Vietnam (January 2005) the Mekong river in particular and/or Southern China (December 2005). We find this out on Saturday afternoon and we were catching a bus to New Plymouth on Sunday morning. Uggh. This meant we had to get our prescription filled in New Plymouth.

Sept 30-

New Plymouth. It is time to hunker down and finish the book and get it to an editor. We have internet 24/7 and that is such a luxury compared to Australia where we were on the net for 2-4 hours a week or less. We are staying with a family who are on our newsletter list and invited us in. We are staying in the converted garage and it is nice to spread out. The weather is stormy to say the least. Makes me glad we are not in a tent at the moment.It has taken over a week to get Tim’s prescription and order the drug. It seems that the drug praziquantal (used to treat worms in dogs and cats) is a controlled drug and hard to get. The side effects are pretty bad too, nausea, vomiting, the more worms the worse the side effects.