Broken down....I need a chain whip

I can thank this picture to the wonderful people I ate dinner with the night before. They of course passed me on the road to see if there was anything they could do to help. Packing me up into their car was sadly not an option. Somewhere south of Punakaiki I heard a loud bang and was unsure of its origin until I heard the tick, tick, tick coming from my rear wheel. A broken spoke. Glad I have a couple of spare ones with which I could do nothing with in the middle of nowhere. I needed a chain whip, which of course I wasn't carrying. So I wound the spoke around one of its neighbors and set off down the road to Greymouth. It wasn't the end of the world, just a two hour delay in a town not really worth mentioning or visiting for that matter. However, the guy at the bike shop was extremely nice and willing to get on it and get me on my way.

I've ridden 180 miles since getting dropped off in Westport. I arrived a day and a half ago in Franz Josef - a place where the mountains reach the sky and the glaciers run towards the Tasman Sea. Today was my day off and I hiked 12ish miles from town to gain an overhead perspective of the massive glacier. Always an impressive view. As soon as I can upload pics again I'll try and put one up. I'm heading out of town tomorrow and not sure how far I'll get, but with the three enormous climbs I have between here and Fox Glacier I may only make it the 21km to get there. We'll see.