It is commonly known among cyclists that you must never cockily sit back (or forward, if you’re a road cyclist) and proclaim that you haven’t had a flat recently. The reason for this is obvious, which is that whoever is in charge of handing out flats will ensure that you hear that worrisome hiss and feel that strange lack-of-bike-responsiveness at a most inopportune moment in the next several miles.

I don’t beleive I made a similarly foolish comment about jetlag on my way into New Zealand, but I believe that whoever hands that out has a much stronger ability to read minds than I might have suspected, and I do recall thinking to myself, “hey, this jetlag thing, it doesn’t apply to me!” and so I find myself wide awake and chipper at 2:30 in the morning local time, three hours of sleep under my grey matter and wondering what’s for dinner. (it’s dinner time in New Zealand of course)

After what was really three trips to New Zealand, prebike plus bike, post bike and bus, and two days of delicious food and fabulous conversation with new/old/internet/inperson friends (and which really had many subtrips within each of those categories), I flew back on a giant metal contraption designed to give the least possible sleeping positions known to man (I may have actually tucked my feet into the seatpocket in front of me a couple of times, but I’m not telling), and I now find myself in Buenos Aires. The Americas, even!

It’s sloppy, and kinda dirty at times, but it’s within driving distance of my home, and has a couple more friends in it, and food that is affordable on most budgets and a horizontal surface that is not too hard and not too soft and not too appealing in my current state of wide-awake, but eventually I’ll get tired, and then I’ll appreciate that, I think. It also isn’t trying to shake us off at the moment, which I understand Chile is still quivering several (by which I mean a dozen or so) times a day. So here I am.

I know I have left you hanging about New Zealand. Short story: everything I wanted. Longer story: to be unfolded. Photos to choke a 1990s era laptop and many quippy observations.

And now? Now I ponder the truly astonishing number of small winged insects in the hanging lamp above me, think about how someone would have cleaned that in New Zealand and hope that whoever hands out sleepiness has me close to the top of the list.