Longstride

I took a day off in Methven, partly because I was tired, but also for logistics reasons.

• I slept in, not getting up until well after 8.
• Breakfast was at Primo and Secundo. I got far more than I expected. I ordered pancakes with a side of scrambled eggs; the “side” turned out to be two pieces of toast with a lot of egg. (Once I paid the bill, it seemed priced like a regular dish, too.) But, I was quite hungry, so I didn’t mind.
• Lunch was at The Brown Pub, one of the two early hotels in Methven. (The Blue Pub, across the street, was the first hotel in town.) I got a chicken schnitzel, which was also far larger than I was expecting.
• After lunch, I wandered around town for a little while, mostly following a hot air balloon that was floating past.
• The Snow Denn has a guest laundry, which I took advantage of. Someone(s?) else left a load of laundry on top of the dryer, and a load in the dryer, which made it a bit awkward when I had to temporarily dump the dryer load on the floor so I could put my washed clothes in the dryer. (I moved that load on top of the washer once my clothes were all out.) Both loads remained untouched an hour later when my clothes were dry.
• I did my resupply at the nearby Foursquare. I got five days of food. I should ideally only need three days of food for this section, but with heavy rain on Monday, I’m concerned I might have to sit in place for a day or two for a river to go down.
• I returned to Thai Chilli for dinner, getting takeaway instead of eating in. By the time I was finished I was thoroughly stuffed.
• I thought about zeroing again tomorrow, but it’s supposed to rain heavily Monday morning, and I’d rather be in a hut on the trail then, rather than en-route to the trail, or worse, tempted into triple-zeroing in town to avoid a day of rain.
• I booked a shuttle for tomorrow to take me back to the trail, on the south side of the Rākaia River. This will be a really expensive shuttle unless by some miracle someone else shows up tomorrow wanting a ride. (I’m really not looking forward to the cost of the shuttle to detour around the Rangitata River just a few days later.)
• CareFree will send me a care package to Lake Tekapo, with the remainder of the electrolyte mix I’ll need for the rest of the trail. (Surprisingly, I seem to have run out of ordinary flavor mix, or the bag with them has somehow gotten misplaced.)
• Otherwise, today was an incredibly lazy day, feeling doubly so because it was quite warm out. Would have been a beautiful day to hike, but I didn’t have the energy for that this morning.