Road Trip... Trivia!

The epic New Zealand road trip of 2010 has come to an end.  On Tuesday morning, I arrived back in Tuateawa, where I will be working and living for the next month.

The road trip was an awesome experience.  I could probably write a novel about it, but isn't a list of trivia more entertaining?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

Life in the Van Trivia

• Road trip length:  36 days/ 35 nights
• Distance driven:  5,447 km/ 3,404 miles
• Nights in random people's houses:  2
• Nights the cold kept me awake:  1 (thank you, upstate ny)
• Total restaurant meals eaten:  3
• Cheese consumed by both of us:  5 kg/ 11 lbs (eww)
• Juice drank by Dave:  15 L/ 4 gallons
• Diet cola drank by Nicole:  not telling you
• What I think of oatmeal for breakfast:  like eating plaster
• Longest consecutive days w/o seeing the inside of a shower or bathtub:  14
• National Parks visited:  7 (Tongariro, Egmont, Westland, Mt. Aspiring, Fiordland, Mt. Cook, Nelson Lakes)
• HEY COW points:  a lot
• Favorite North Island city:  New Plymouth
• Favorite South Island city:  Dunedin
• Favorite moment:  hiking into Angelus Lake basin at sunset
• Creepiest moment:  sharing a very small backcountry hut with an insane hunter packing a large rifle

Tramping (Hiking) Trivia

• Distance hiked:  290.5 km/ 181.6 mi
• Days hiked:  24 out of 36 (66.6%)
• Trail hours:  113.5 (nearly three 40-hour work weeks)
• Average trail speed:  1.6 mph
• Approximate elevation gain:  8370 m/ 27,600 ft (almost an Everest)
• Highest elevation:  2590 m/ 8547 feet (summit of Ruapehu)
• Lowest elevation:  sea level (Tasman Sea)
• Longest day:  10 hrs (camp to summit of Ngauruhoe to camp to Whakapapa Village)
• Greatest consecutive days on the trail:  9 (Mt. Aspiring Nat'l Park to Routeburn/Caples Tracks to Kepler Track)
• Longest without resupply:  5 (Routeburn/Caples Tracks)
• Nights in backcountry huts:  11
• Nights in a tent:  1
• Named mountains summited:  5  (Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu, Taranaki, Luxmore, Roberts)
• Alpine crossings:  8
• Unbridged streams crossed:  38 (yes I counted)
• Places where my boots are held together with glue:  11
• Wipe-outs (defined as ass on ground):  9
• Foot mishaps:  2 (1 strange something between the toes; 1 ball of foot strain)
• Ibuprophen taken:  too many...  waaaaaaay too many
• Useless DoC warnings:  3 (1 bridge out, but the stream was easy to cross; 1 hill slide that was easy to bypass; 1 very muddy section, which was actually dry)
• Times I got rained on:  3 (not bad!)
• Things I daydreamed about most while hiking:  a hot shower, obscene quantities of bacon (yeah, I know) and eggs, Mumford & Sons songs
• Kea seen:  5
• Sea lions seen:  3
• Penguins seen:  17 (7 yellow-eyed penguins; 10 blue penguins)

The end...  or maybe to be continued.  :-)