Pardon me for posting to a year-old thread...
Hopefully all who posted a year ago are still riding safe and sound.
I hitch-hiked around New Zealand for 3 months with a knock-off of a Deardorf 4x5 with a massive light leak -- not many images from that trip. But it got me thinking of returning better prepared. Got a lighter and better 4x5 (Gowland Pocket View), bought a bike (an early Trek mountain bike), front and back panniers, and a ticket to New Zealand -- about 6 years after that light-leaked trip.
I did not go specifically to bike tour -- I went to photograph and just figured that biking was the best way to go. Hitch-hiking was okay, but lacked flexibility. I could not afford to buy or hire a car (let alone pay for petrol!)
The plan (a solo trip) was to be there 5 months, then stop off in Fiji and bike there for a month before returning to California. This was 1986. I never bike toured before and never got around to putting all my gear on the bike before I left CA...putting it all together at the NZ airport was an interesting experience. I got about 6 feet from the airport before putting the real derailer thru the spokes...snapping it off (I hadn't noticed that it got bent in a bit on the plane). Not a great start...I wondered how the next 6 months were going to go.
However, leaving Auckland for my first official day on the road was encouraging. As I slowly pedaled up a long hill, a white Toyota pulled along side of me, opened up the sliding door to reveal 3 Moaris and a keg of beer. As I slowly made my way up the hill, they passed me cups of beer. Somehow I knew the next 6 months were going to be just fine! With the 80 pounds of gear, 30 pounds of bike and me at 220 pounds, I figure I had about 320 to 350 pounds of rolling weight (depending on how much food I had on the bike). I broke a spoke pretty quickly so I put some gear in my backpack (my mask and snokel, etc) and sent it ahead by bus to the next place I wanted to go tramping (backpacking). That got 16 pounds off the bike and had no more broken spokes.
The biking experience was wonderful -- moving thru the environment rather than sitting in a metal box. I believe the pace, and experiencing the light, smells and sounds of the land added to the quality of my images -- The 3 months I had "unsuccessfully" photographed there 6 years earlier also contributed greatly to this trip. I believe life is all about the journey...and biking is all about the journey. I got a good 20 print portfolio from that trip -- that can be edited down to a rock solid 12 images (16x20 silver gelatin). I can't ask more that that!
I never made it to Fiji. Instead, I married an Aussie in her hometown, whom I had met in NZ on that previous 3 month hitch-hiking trip. We'll celebrate our 20th anniversary this year. We have three 9-year-old boys -- we took a little bike ride around our end of town today. I try to bike to work most days (10 miles one way along Humboldt Bay). My knees are shot from 3 surgeries due to 30 yrs of hard basketball and 10 years of trail building -- biking is what keeps them painfree.
Thanks for reading my "book"!