Best shortcut ever?

30km to the next town. That's normally not something to complain about, but the bike has its own mind about which hills are easy and which are hard.

Oh, you know, let me throw some background on NZ roads at you.

The roads are signed all sorts of different ways, but from a user's perspective, the differences are minimal. All roads are two lanes, with or without a dashed white line down the center, with essentially no shoulders. More impressive sounding names, such as "Highway 1", indicate greater traffic and aspirations but no greater width or speed limits. Perhaps the lesser roads, which cyclists avoiding the holiday traffic on 1 are likely to use, are hillier. Perhaps much hillier.

My map made me an incredible bargain. There was a bike trail, in its planning stages, running the length of the river that I would otherwise have to bike a long hilly loop around. I suspected the trail to be flatter, since it was pictured as abutting the river, and thus quicker, or at least a welcome respite from traffic. And that it existed could not be denied, because it was right there, running alongside the road where the map called it, and I had seen numerous signs and brochures describing it.

You already know how the story ends: the trail decayed as I distanced further from the highway, losing first its fine gravel cover and then entering spotty sections of sand. The design was full of climbs and downhills that I'm sure a mountain biker would appreciate, but for the most part I felt I was pushing my road bike through the wrong side of a Mountain Dew commercial.

It ended on a logging road, which had a huge tree down across it. To be frank, this detour was beginning to get awesome. I had to break out a huge section of the tree to roll my bike through it, and the road kept getting increasingly remote. Then there was this part where I was desperate for water, and all I could find, because the river had completely vanished, was this tiny red stream -- but when I drew the water it was yellow. This tiny stream ran through an enormous logging valley utterly devoid of shade; there were only dead stumps and dirt all around, and I had to circle three quarters of it with no shade, and --

Wait, I think I forgot what blog this was. Shades of "a little floating adventure" are haunting the page. Let me exorcise them here. Basically, what I'm saying is there is a huge marketing opportunity for drink dealers in the middle of that dry valley. Call it the Draughts of Mordor, and sell it to lost cyclists. It fits, because a more desperate landscape I have not ever seen. I'm not saying that you'd make money every day, but you could get pretty good rates on what you have, and perhaps even charge for your air-conditioning services and sunscreen.

(But, secretly, the adventure continued. It was the kind of trip that feels awesome because you know that the misery is limited and the stories aren't; that even when the camp site you were completely relying on for water and toilet is on the wrong side of the river, the tiny scratch of earth you can make to lay your head on will be just as comfortable, and as you go to sleep you are surrounded by this blue glow -- just these tiny blue dots in the darkness, on the ground -- glowing out of attraction or death, because they seem to peep out from where you disturbed the earth, and they drown out the stars, if any, above you, and all other concerns, like where your next sip of water will come from. Just sleep.)

That little booth in Mordor can sell run-on sentences to make Henry James drool, because they seem to be in plenty supply in New Zealand. You know what? Let's get back on track here. What eats are worthy for an enterprising entrepreneur to take over in this country? Let's look at a couple alternatives:

Burger Fuel: This chain produces bizarre concoctions Dagwood never dreamed of. First struggle to fit the sandwich into your mouth, second grab a hundred napkins to wipe the beet juice off yourself. Verdict: worth further investigation.

Hell's Pizza: With a stark red and black decor and menu items named after the seven deadly sins, this is a restaurant chain sure to keep the children asking uncomfortable questions. Posing as a gourmet pizza joint, it falls short in this goal. In Minneapolis, Luce is never more than a scenic walk away and has superior taste and texture in every way. Verdict: pass.