Off we go! Pedal Power!

Finally the job hunting is over. Cheryl is set up to start teaching in February at Newlands College, a public high school of 1400 students on the outskirts of town. Mike, unfortunately, had to settle for an engineering position which only demands 32 hours of work per week. He'll be stuck windsurfing several times a week- poor dear! His contract begins in mid-January, so we're officially ready for a nice, long holiday.

Amidst all the job negotiations, we've found ourselves a couple bikes and all the accessories you could need (we think) for a month-long tour of the South Island. The trip starts tomorrow with a 10:00 a.m. ferry to Picton and we'll get right on the road, following the east coast down to Christchurch. That portion of the trip should be pretty easy going, but then we'll make our way across to the west coast over Arthur's Pass National Park with an elevation of 900 meters… yikes!

We're both pretty psyched for the new leg of our adventure, even though we're leaving Wellington with many things still unseen. The people here have been so generous and helpful to us, and we already find ourselves bumping into friends when we're out downtown. It's still too soon to say that the city feels like "home", but we are looking forward to coming back and settling down here in the new year. The neighbourhoods surrounding the city are all built into steep hillsides and a lot of the homes are only accessible via pedestrian walkways- narrow switchbacks connecting a high road and a low road. These places have spectacular views, but probably not very convenient for loading the windsurf gear on and off the car. Some places even have little outdoor elevators to carry people in style from the carpark up to the houses... probably safe to say that those homes would be out of our price range! We'll see what we end up with… they generally rent flats about 2-3 weeks in advance here so we'll wait until the biking is finished before starting search.

Sorry! WE had some pictures too, but this computer doesn't allow us to add them! ARGH! Cheers!