2025-11-04 (Tuesday) — Mega Conch

(written on the 26th from notes taken previously)

Well… bad morning. I’m on a pretty rough spiral addiction wise–all of them.

😕

Finally got away from the library parking lot probably sometime around noon and started making my way north along the coast.

The windy roads through bright green hills brought out my concern with the brakes a bit more 😅, and upon encountering a gravelly lookout points on one of the turns at the top of one of the larger hills, with an absolutely gorgeous view, I pulled over and began the work of bleeding the brakes by myself.

Not an easy job to do alone.

I used one of the large, six-liter water bottles I had just bought at Pak ‘N Save as the wedge between the seat and brake pedal to hold the pedal down (I bought the water bottles to use as pee bottles once empty . It’s been quite the challenge trying to find a suitable pee bottle in New Zealand, as for the first several days of being here, I couldn’t find any with the required opening size. If it’s too small, then… I wake up more because it’s possible to get some spray or dribble back, so I have to think and be careful. Still not as bad as actually getting up and walking to a bathroom, which would likely wake me up to the point that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, but still not ideal.  These 6-liter bottles might be too tall, but… we’ll see.)

Anyway, the brake fluid that came out while doing the bleeding of all four calipers was dark and nasty, so I had hopes that maybe it was just really really old crappy fluid. 🤞

A man named Caleb stopped by to see if I needed help, but I was just about done at that point. We ended up chatting for a good little while, he was getting ready to go spearfishing, or whatever you call it, the people who go snorkeling with a spear gun?

He told me about a campsite near where he lived, so after chatting with him, and then after wrapping everything up with my brake bleeding job, I headed back toward the coast.

Gratefully found a pit toilet on one of the beaches and was able to empty out Micro John.

Did I mention Micro John? 😅

Micro John is the two-liter ice-cream container that is the actual receptacle at the bottom of Little John 2. I haven’t yet been quite sure what to do with little john. It’s the throne, but I haven’t wanted to use it as the actual receptacle because I haven’t been sure about what to do with garbage bags full of feces. Wasn’t an issue back home, but definitely more challenging here.

Much easier to line an ice cream container with toilet paper, use it, and then dump the whole works into any toilet.

The lid keeps the smell completely locked into the ice-cream container. Pretty amazing, actually. 🙏

Just a little ways down the road, I stopped off at a little beach at Piapia Bay Cove in the hopes of going snorkeling, but the water was super cloudy.

I did come away with a huge hermit-crab/conch-type shell. Biggest one I’ve ever seen. 😲

Gathered up some trash that was floating in the water and that was along the shore, wandered north, I think again fighting the blinding reflections of the setting sun on the windshield that made it pretty much impossible to see the narrow winding road through the hills in front of me.

Really is nerve racking, honestly.

Eventually made my way to a designated freedom camping location off Waterfront Drive in Mangonui.

Lift the world.

Bring it on.

~ stephen