The bicycle tour began today! 
We stayed overnight in the town of Clyde in a wonderful gold-rush era hotel, got our bicycles adjusted at 9:30 this morning, and began riding at 10 am.
The Otago Central Rail Trail is a 150 kilometer former railroad track gravel trail with boxes to stamp your bicycling adventure passport in each town along the way. Beautiful. Scenic. Cloudy. Then, windy, then rainy! Lightning flashed about 1 pm after our lunch, the thunder boomed, and down came heavy rain. We were soaked but still had smiles on our faces.
We did the longest uphill climbs of the trip today, and it feels good getting those out of the way, but we enjoyed a lot of nice flat valley riding also. (This is mild stuff compared to what our friends, Rich Steffen, Darrell Sales, Ralph Jackson, and Bill Creekbaum are used to doing!)
A railway train can only do a 50:1 slope (2%) so this trail is graded “1 out of 5” in difficulty. We did 37 kilometers today and have 32 km to do tomorrow above a scenic canyon.
These shorter distances give us a lot of time to stop, take pictures, look at the sheep and vineyards, and admire the beauty of the hills, bridges, and rivers.
The bike company has arranged to bookings into hotels at each of our five stops, and made dinner reservations, too. We are very happy with all accommodations so far!
New Zealand has so many different land features. This area is remarkably different than our other experiences, and we love it.
Here’s a short video of our bike ride: