Nice Halo!

I got to mount up and check out the new nitelights.co.nz on my helmet last
night, and i have to say I'm really impressed by the light so far - a nice
tight beam for decent penetration and a wide halo for decent near field
vision, and most importantly for me, to throw a nice usable level of light
on the map, rather than wash it out and blind me!

And then there were 3

After a morning getting out for a spin on the local trails, and tracking
down Danielle and a box full of Liam's gear that has been living in
Australia for a couple of years now, we headed into town in search of food,
fins and tick removal tools.

We found food, fins, tea tree oil to spray on the ticks that apparently
encourages them to vacate, and our 3rd team member Mike (and his cairns
based mate Matt). Mike flew in last night, and we managed to run into him
just before he doubled up on a couple of things we'd bought and forgotten
to tell him about.

OK, back to the hostel now to bag up a load of food and then maybe another
swim to test out the fins!

The temperature reached 29 yesterday, and is supposed to do the same today,
so we'd better spend a bit of time by the pool getting used to the humidity
;-)

Shopping

One of the biggest logistical issues of these races is sorting out the
food, so after a couple of hours walking round coles laughing at the coon
cheese, and trying to find all the highest calorie food we could, this is
the resulting pile - feeding a family of four for a week for the bargain
price of 645.71 aussie.

Now to begin the labourious process of splitting it all up into 3 hour
portions.

Acclimatising

Well we made it!

All the bikes got loaded, we got upgraded to business class - our last bit
of luxury for a couple of weeks - the plane didn't crash and air NZ didn't
manage to lose any of our gear.

We checked into JJ's backpackers, the bikes have been put together and seem
to work fine, and we've done our first lap of Cairns (it didn't take long
and we've met our first drunks) and located the site of race HQ (a 5 min
walk from JJs) and a gelateria ;-)

Will they make it?

Bike boxes awaiting loading, apparently the luggage hold is already a bit
full!

NZ adventure racers slumming it

Thankfully the 3 Wellington teams have got enough frequent flyers between
us that we're getting to celebrate mr rudge's 50th in auckland koru lounge
before heading off on a 5 hr trip to some serious heat and humidity!

Osprey Packs/nitelights.co.nz

we're proud to announce that not only will be using fantastic packs from Osprey, world leaders in pack technology, but we'll also be using the awesome 900 Lumen dimmable bike lights from nitelights.co.nz. Not to be confused with Nightlightning from Christchurch, these high quality, low cost no nonsense LED lights are a new product shipping out of Auckland, and we'll be spearheading their first major foray into Australia, the home of Ay-Ups.