The All Black Air New Zealand plane that took me to Queenstown. Air NZ has painted there new planes all black in support of the All Blacks for the Rugby World Cup this September.
The night before my flight I was as excited as a kid at Christmas! I knew I had to be up super early to catch my flight, but still had a hell of time falling asleep. Morning came really early – 4:45 am! That gave me enough time to have some breakfast and get to the airport in time to check my bike and bags. I usually try and get the early flight so I can get the most out of the day and early morning flights are cheaper than the rest!
I had no problems at the airport. Checked bag and bike without any issues – I love Air NZ. While waiting for the flight to board I overheard that Jet Star cancelled their flight to Queenstown (this is why I don’t fly with them – unreliable!), which meant they shifted on to the Air NZ flight.
When we started to board I noticed that we got to fly on a 2 week old Air New Zealand – All Blacks plane. All this meant was that the plane was painted all black with a cool fern on the side (looked bad-ass) and that you could use your phone to make calls and text as well as surf the internet during the flight. I didn’t bother making any calls/texts or surf the net as it was a little pricey and it was too damn early to call anyone!
Once in Queenstown I collected my gear and took the bus into town. I was able to store my bags at Nomads, so I headed there to drop my bike and gear. I had sometime to kill so I wandered around Queenstown, checked out some local shops and read magazines in Whitcurls.
My home for the next week in Queenstown. I am one lucky dude!
By mid-day my mate rocked into town from Dunedin. We met up, hit up the grocery store for some food supplies and then headed to his mates place where we would camp on his front lawn for the week.
I knew that we would be camping, but I figured it would be a DOC site. The house we were staying at was 20 mins outside of the town and had an amazing view of the mountains and a sweet outdoor shower! After tossing the tents up and having a bite to eat we headed to 7 mile to do some riding.
7 mile is a mountain bike park/walk track where you can enter from either Wilson Bay or Glenorchy Rd. There are about 14 tracks to keep you busy. It is primarily made up of single track and blue graded trails. It was a great way for us to start our week of riding with some smooth trails to get us ready for the onslaught of downhill to come! The tracks we managed to ride were Kachoong, which was a downward flowing track with some jumps and smooth berms that guide you down the hill. Excellent track I highly recommend. We ended up riding this track 4 times that avro! We also hit up Grin & Holler and Gravitron, which were also a lot of fun to ride. There was a wooden structures skills area to test yourself too! This was just a taste of what was to come for the week… already happy as hell!
Unfortunately I didnt pack my camera on this ride, so I missed out on some stellar photos, but it just means I have to go back and ride again ehehe.
After riding for 4 hours we headed back to the lake for a short swim and then retired back to the house for dinner and beers. There was a ping-pong table in the basement, so after dinner we had a bit of fun bashing the ball around for a while. Tired from an early morning and mid day ride it was time for bed. I tucked into my tent with rain falling quite heavily. I fell asleep easily thinking of the downhill to be had the next day.
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