More Pictures from the Epic

While life here in Wellington is taking off in it's own direction, we recently found new pictures from the Alpine Epic that we still thoroughly enjoy reflecting upon.  Some are our pictures and some taken by a good friend, Derek Morrison, who helped us get through each day of the race by popping up in some random location with his huge camera, documenting the ride in a way that really caught our emotions...(in a good way)!

 

After day 3, cooling down in the local river...that is Zeph and I still looking a bit delirious (and relieved) that we made it through another day...

The Great Mt. Cook in beautiful pre-dawn light. There really is no wonder why or how this mountain helped transform an ordinary bee keeper into the first man who scaled Mt. Everest

This road on Stage 6, day 4, was so long, long, long...however this picture grasps a much different viewpoint

 This was the beginning of Stage 1 or Stage 2...can't really differentiate between the two as they all started bloody fast...

 There were more than a couple gorges we rode down (and back up and out) during the four days. This one had winds of epic proportion blowing down it.

 And another gorge...truly straight out of Lord of the Rings...

 And yet another river crossing...right when our feet started to dry out, we would have to cross yet another river...

 One of our more favorite pictures with the great Mt. Cook in the background...These four riders were the lead riders of the race and I can assure you they spent a significantly shorter amount of time in the saddle each day than us! We would finish our ride to find our friend Kashi (the rear one in the photo riding next to his partner Marcus) already showered and looking fresh as a daisy.

 And then there was the shack...for those of you who have read the book, The Shack...this was an exact description of it...we rode around the corner and it took my breath away as we were directly across from the most peaceful, isolated shack we had ever laid eyes on. To say it was amazing would be an understatement...

That's all for now! Zeph and I just started our third week of working for Wellington Realty, which is a boutique commercial real estate firm here in Thorndon (the nicer part of Wellington for a visual)...We are really lucky to be working with our boss, Peter, who loves what he does and is teaching us all he knows- which is a lot! He has 41 years experience valuing, leasing, and selling commercial real estate here in Wellington, so we couldn't have found a better person to learn from.  We moved into a flat and haven't taken any pictures as it has been a bit of a depressing spot, even for us! It is all gray, which probably hasn't helped, quite cold and very wet.  Not until the very recent past did they begin insulating homes and making windows with more than 1 pane!  It was also giving us a commute to work that was the last thing we wanted...so, we went out and found a new place we get to move into in a little over a week.  It is a new (2 1/2 years old), cozy one bedroom, with a heck of a view, a great deck (for Z's BBQ), conveniently located, with lots of insulation, dual paned windows (YAY)! So, a new appreciation for warmth, dryness, and more sun! YAY! We will definitely be taking some pictures to share...Hope all is well with all of you and know we think of you often and miss you like mad...and send lots of Love your way...All the best...S&Z

Bittersweet

 Reflecting on happy days on our lovely Orbeas during the AlpineEpic

There is no question we have so much to be thankful/grateful for in our lives...We have each other, we have our health, we have amazing family and friends (new friends we are meeting every day), we are on an adventure of a lifetime, we now have a great little flat with a view, and we now have jobs (yay)! Those are all the sweet things in our lives.  The bitter of the bittersweet happened last Friday night (or wee hours of Saturday morning) when our own Queen Sally (our Isuzu Bighorn) was loaded to the rim for the big move into our new flat Saturday morning. She was full of about 2/3rds of our belongings, including our lovely Orbea mountain bikes, huge bags of all our riding clothes, camping equipment, sleeping bags, tents, replacement parts for the bikes that we brought over from the states as they are even more expensive here...only to find it all gone the next morning.  Sally had essentially been mugged.  Her driver's side window broken, where they unlocked her, and took everything out the back.  We try not to recall that feeling of seeing our vehicle empty as it had been packed to the rim.  We have always been as safe as we can with our bikes as they are worth so much to us.  They were covered so no one could see them, and covered again with all the stuff we were moving the next morning.  And, there was Sally, empty.  It had been raining a lot so fingerprints were not an option.  We don't know who or how or why...on our good days we are hopeful and on our bad days we beat ourselves up over what we could have done different.  There was no insurance for the contents as when we went to get content insurance, we needed a home address, which we didn't have because we were traveling. When we tried to get travel insurance, it was only good for a week and only covered up to $1,000 per bike.  While everyone seems to have different explanations as far as what happened, or what will happen, we don't really care...we only want our stuff back and thinking about worse case scenarios surely doesn't make us feel any better or get us any closer to finding it.  Granted, it is just "stuff".  But in this case, it was our stuff which happened to have a lot of sentimental value...from the hand me down bike Zeph had given me to ride, to the bikes we got engaged on, to my favorite green beenie, to Zeph's bike that was part of his payment for working on the Luna team last year.  Through the experience we have met a lot of amazing people and we feel like the entire bike community here is looking out for us to find our bikes.  A couple days ago we received an email from Carl, who insisted us borrow a couple of his (really nice) mountain bikes for the next 6 weeks while he is gone.  So, we focus on those great people, not the morons that took our stuff, and we remain hopeful we will see it all again very, very soon.

 A little more reflection...please bring our ponies back to us or let us find them soon!

On the other front (the "sweet" front), we have both spent the last two weeks interviewing with different real estate firms.  We have been organized and diligent and disciplined, in our questions we ask to learn more about how each organization operates and where each of will fit best.  Funny, after individually interviewing, we have both chosen to work with a small, boutique commercial firm here in Wellington called Wellington Realty (www.wellingtonrealty.co.nz).  The owner is one of the nicest people we have met here, with a great reputation, 41 years of experience that he wants to teach (us), and above all, he loves what he does which makes him very good at it.  So, we are blessed as we will be getting paid to learn, which motivates us greatly to make Wellington Realty its own David and Goliath success story.  And, just like that, we both begin our new "job" Tuesday morning at 9am, which is very exciting indeed.

 Wellington's own Bittersweet Chocolate truffles... 

We continue to explore the great trails (www.tracks.org.nz)here in Wellington and are quickly learning which ones are still in good shape after 4 inches of rain as there is no question we are approaching the middle of winter.  We did move into our new flat, which has great views of the ocean in Lyall Bay, the airport (that is a good view for the two of us), and a lovely golf course.  We are filling it with hand me downs and seconds that we are quite grateful for (we are sitting at a loaner table from Linda and chilly bins/ice chests as I type). We look forward to a home and are working on our dream list of amenities including a gas stove, a garage, a view, a bathtub, good insulation, a garden/backyard, and maybe a security system...


That is the update here in lovely Wellington.  We continue to enjoy ourselves and learning lots about ourselves and each other in the process.  I apologize for not writing sooner but I assure you would not have wanted to read anything I would've written in the past week as our moods were down (this is a mild understatement), and I had writers block.  Hope you are all enjoying the warmer weather in the states, wherever you are and know you are never far from our thoughts.  Much love, Sarah & Zeph.