Coromandel, Mana Community.

My twisty circus friends from my last visit in NZ, the Twisty twinz, have their parents in Coromandel living in a community. This area in New Zealand is known for their ‘alternative’ (should be named ‘normal’) way of life, much alike the hippie philosophy.

We stay two weeks there, working in the organic garden and help them in their sustainable life. They grow all sort of veggies and fruits. We never ever had such good food.

This is also time to deal with my back wheel. I deeply think it had been cursed! First the new cones I get from Auckland (two days hitchhiking back and forth) are not the right models. Then the new rim I changed for having more strength (the other one was a temporary one, get in South America) is trued with a bad offset and a ‘up and down’ problem that I must fix again later....

At a final stage I must get a new Schwalbe tyre and I can only get a Marathon Plus and not the Marathon XR better designed for my trip. I get it from the Giant shop in Auckland, probably the most detestable guys I have ever met selling bike parts. They are the one that also sold to me the wrong cones. Adding to that the tyre exploded some weeks later, something very unusual for a Schwalbe tyre.

At last we are ready to hit the road both of us this time and a new stage begins for our trip.