New Zealand. Family wedding. 19 hours in the air. 9,000 miles from home. It’s not what you’d call a “quick out and back.” It’s an adventure, and the palpitating heart of adventure, of course, is uncertainty. Where to go? What to do? Will it be good? Will it be hard? Will we eat good food? These aren’t questions you can answer in advance. In fact, you shouldn’t, unless an adventure is not what you’re after.

I knew if I was going to go all the way to New Zealand, I was going to ride mountain bikes, and if you’re going to ride mountain bikes in New Zealand (on the North Island anyway), you’re going to Rotorua. I felt very excited by this prospect, because Rotorua is meant to be a global Mecca for people like me, but also I felt daunted, because what if I wasn’t up to it?

Uncertainty.

After the wedding, we drove down from Auckland on the Monday morning, rented a pair of mountain bikes and climbed up into the Whakarewarewa Forest, where palms and evergreens cluster around the bases of towering redwoods. Yes. Redwoods. After clear-cutting this area decades ago, they planted redwoods to see if they could cultivate them for lumber. The trees grew, but then the government, and the local Maoris decided not to cut them down. Thus Whakarewarewa is a magical place.

We pushed ourselves up the hillside, the bush teeming and buzzing, as the trail switched back and forth, until we were far above the town and its lake, breathing hard, trying to take it all in.

Sadly, my riding companion, fresh off the plane, blew up early and had to ride back down to the bike center for refreshments and rest. On my own, I continued to climb, eventually plunging down again through high banked turns, smiling constantly, whispering “f$%k yeah” to myself, unconsciously, and then laughing outloud.

Onward I plowed, through pine groves and thick fern, through all my own doubts, insecurities, and shortcomings, until I almost blew up myself, trying to hurry along so as not to keep my friend waiting all day.

It was hot as murder.

Luck offered up a food stand in an unexpected parking lot. A warm Coca-Cola. A cold bottle of water. A snack. To complete my loop there were another 20kms of this climbing and descending in front of me. Briefly, I considered phoning in a pick-up. Maybe I didn’t need to go so hard on the first day. Eventually I resolved to keep going. I’d come an awful long way not to see what might happen next.

Fifteen minutes out from the snack spot, I caught a pack of eBikers on the long climb that skirts the edges of Lake Tikitapu and Lake Rotokākahi, the latter of which is sacred and can’t be approached by non-Māori. I rode along behind my new, motor-assisted friends for a bit. They were Kiwis and friendly, and they cheerfully offered some advice for riding at my next destination, Taupō. Unfortunately, they were also slow, even with pedal assist, and so when they stopped at a lookout to take photos, I pressed on.

Coca-Cola is a miracle drug. I was feeling good again.

The trail system in this forest is vast, over 300kms of every kind of everything. I took things easy on this day, because hospitalizations in alternate hemispheres aren’t my idea of a good time. Still, I can see the serpentine tech trails spinning away from the very rideable track I’m on, the 35km Forest Loop. In a perfect world, I’d live here for about a month. Maybe longer. Ride it all.

And have a primary care physician on call.

Even on a straightforward ride like this one, you never know what’s coming. It made my heart flutter in ways both positive and negative. The bike, a Giant Trance X, was unfamiliar (although I paid to have the brake levers reversed because in most places they ride right lever/front brake and the left lever/lever left brake, so called ‘moto style), the heat was something to get used to coming directly from winter, and I wasn’t sure I really knew how far 35kms was or how much climbing was left.

I was here on reputation. Rotorua is an IMBA gold-level ride center. These trails have hosted World Championships and Crankworx tour events. And, as I said, there are redwoods, the same as the Pacific Coast variety. How could I miss?

Turns out, I couldn’t.

But these kinds of adventures aren’t made of blind faith in the awesomeness of all things. My nephew said, “If I get married in New Zealand, will you come?” And you know what I said, but it’s 9000 miles by air to Auckland and another 140 by road (driving on the opposite side of the car and road) to Rotorua. There’s a lot of low-level stress in that trip, a lot of details to be worked out and navigated, and there’s some high-level stress as well, because so much is still unknown.

The riding, once it begins, is the best and easiest part.

I had a hell of a day on the bike in a hell of a pretty place, the sort of place designed for people like me to have peak experiences. I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t want to tell that story on its own, all beautiful landscape and flowing dirt, because that’s not how adventures go, even when they’re going very, very well, even when you get lucky, and it all goes right.