Books and Aussies

Our last night in Queenstown, Ari and I met Peter Campbell, an Aussie cycling through New Zealand to raise money for mental health services for men throughout Australia. He had traveled to Tasmania with his wife and saw the cycling NZ book, which inspired his journey. He was flying out the next day, and we exchanged stories of cycling adventures over dinner.
Ari and I had trouble obtaining a current cycling guide book for our journey, and had been traveling with a Cycling New Zealand book published in 1994. Although the roads haven't changed, some critical information had (for example the book would read, "When you travel to Alford Forest, ask at the store where to camp"- store had closed 5 years prior). So when we saw Peter reading his 2000 Lonely Planet cycling book, pangs of jealousy set in. Ari, trying to mask his excitement, offered to buy his guidebook. Although Peter was not willing to part with his book on a permanent basis, he graciously offered to loan it to us for the duration of our journey.
About one week later, while we were cycling through glacier country, we had our first book mishap. We had a relatively hard day of cycling, and while we were eating dinner we realized that the guidebook was nowhere to be found. Peter had written his name and address in the book for us to return to him, and without the book we would have no way to contact him.
After mentally retracing our steps of that afternoon, we figured out where we may have left it. Ari reluctantly volunteered to cycle the 30 km rountrip to retrieve the book. We then noticed our "campsite neighbors" Mick and Liz. We shared our situation with them, and being friendly Aussies, quickly volunteered to drive us back to retrieve the book. The book was exactly where we had left it, and Ari purchased wine and chocolates to share with the Aussies as a thank you. After an evening of long conversation, we realized we had a lot in common and hope to meet them in NSW Australia in the future. Thank you Peter, Mick, and Liz.