Between February 2002 and March 2003 I circumnavigated 12,504 miles around the Australian continent on my bicycle, or push bike as they say there. After that I went to New Zealand for three months and met up with a friend and ended up pushing the total mileage to 14,115.7 miles (22717.02 km). I spent 269 days on my bike, 272 days not on my bike, and getting 67 flat tires over those 17 months.
I started and ended my 13 month lap around Australia at Luna Park in St. Kilda/Melbourne.. The distance around Australia (including Tasmania) ended up being about 20,281km (12,600 miles).
One fun thing I did during my trip was to visit six "confluences", which is where a whole-numbered latitude/longitude mark intersects for The Degree Confluence Project.
Craig
Oh wait, it was today that I shaved off my beard.
I spent about 5 hours this morning cleaning the yard. All the little trees that Robin planted last year have grass growing up to them...so the grass needed to be hoed away and mulch put in. I did this and cleaned up some of the brush in the back yead. Got sore arms, a broken hoe, and a fat blister out of it. Caroline's friend Anna showed up and it was her birthday...so we all went to Puzzleworld. Puzzleworld was pretty cool, all kinds of illusions and stuff, plus a giant maze.
Robin had a couple friends over and we had yummy sushi for dinner. I made a chocolate birthday cake for Anna. The store didn't exactly have the largest selection of cake mixes. It was 97% fat free, and also 97% taste free, and also 97% softness-free also. At one point during the dinner Robin was making more spring rolls and cut off a slice of cake and stuck it in my spring roll. I thought it was crisp tofu but it wasn't after tasting the chocolate.
Played a bunch of games with the girls and then we decided to go down to the Pub. Robin later said he thought we were done for the night since it was 11pm and we were playing board games on the floor...but then thought "oh dear" when we left to go out at 11pm.
Ran into the Irish Kidz from Queenstown at the pub. We all got booted out at closing time, but Marie and MCQ both sang most of the menu to the tune of all the popular favorite songs. From there we tried getting into some dance club that wasn't letting anyone in. The door guy said "no means 'no' in New Zealand" and then went back in, so Marie hit the buzzer again. I think he wanted to throttle us. Everyone kind of split up after that and MCQ and I got back around 4am.
The chocolate cake spent the night on the golf course.