I woke from a gale-force night. Strong winds wracked the tent until early morning. I kept waking to find the tent partially folded over, yet I arose to find the tent dry and intact. I intended to wait until the end of morning rains to pack up, when I realized the night’s wind hadn’t brought rain – the tent remained dry!<\/p>\n
I scrambled to pack before the rain. As I packed, I noticed the rear tire flat – again! As I finished repairing the tube the rain began. I tucked the loaded bike under shelter and retreated to the tavern’s covered patio to impatiently wait out the rain.<\/p>\n
Too impatiently. When the rain stopped, I gave it ten minutes, and prepared to leave. When the rain restarted, I retreated to shelter. When the rain again stopped, I headed out. Into more rain. I carried on. As the rain increased, I geared up for inclement weather.<\/p>\n
The day started with climbing, recurring on and off all day. Cahoo drove by me by several times today as I struggled up hills. With heavy headwinds. The forecast called for 45 kph, but at least it wasn’t that!<\/p>\n
Until the last 10 km. I slammed directly into winds bending over trees, the wind tossing me back and forth. I had to walk any non-downhill gradient to make any progress at all!<\/p>\n
With heavy rain in the forecast for the night, I passed up the free domain camping for a hostel. Which then wasn’t there.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I knew of another hostel in 15 km. Carrying on, around the next corner I found the first hostel (Otapawa Farmstay – quite nice)!<\/p>\n
Storms raged, but I settled in before the blazing wood stove. I spent the evening chatting with Rocky, a tree harvester with a process audit tomorrow. We talked about US politics, cycling, weather, and NZ. A great end to the day.<\/p>\n
I’m managing my time as I head into Wellington. I’m heading for the Rimutaka Trail that I learned of during class. From here just west of Pongaroa I have 90 km to Masterton on Friday, a day to the Rimutaka, and a day into Wellington arriving Sunday night, returning the bicycle on Tuesday, and my flight Wednesday morning. About a day and a half to spare.<\/p>\n
Except the forecast for Saturday and Sunday is rain and gale-force winds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke from a gale-force night. Strong winds wracked the tent until early morning. I kept waking to find the tent partially folded over, yet I arose to find the tent dry and intact. I intended to wait until the end of morning rains to pack up, when I realized the night’s wind hadn’t brought … Continue reading “181101-The Tent Survived”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3237,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions\/3237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}