A Long Cloud Ride

* The popular cyclist, Josie Dew, cycles round New Zealand and shares her unique and entertaining perspective of Kiwi Life in the perpetual adventure of her life on wheels.

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After two months on board a Russian container ship sailing 15,000 miles across the world, Josie finally arrived in New Zealand with her bike. Over the next nine months she cycled 9000 kilometres all over North and South Islands while experiencing the wettest, windiest and stormiest year on record. During this time Josie was spat at, shouted at, honked at, run off the road, blown off the road, soaked, sunburnt, frozen, hailed on, snowed on, starved, over- fed, over-charged, under-charged, over a possum (a dead one), under a possum (a tree-climbing one) bitten, stung, dog-chased, car-chased, bitten again, wounded, x-rayed, stuck in mud, stuck in floods, battered by unseasonable storms, peppered with shrapnel-like gravel, skimmed by 50-tonned logging trucks, swallowed by bottomless potholes, whiplashed by an argumentative tree, haunted by the eerie call of a morepork (owl), followed by a fantail (bird), chased by an ostrich, dive-bombed by an Australian harrier, charged at by a boar, caught in a sheep-jam and held up by a cow-block.