They had their share of challenges, but three Ahwatukee natives are having the time of their young lives bike-packing through New Zealand and the South Islands.
Emily “Em” Pawlik, Tyler Meester, Saxon Richardson and Ellen Palczynski rode through Cyclone Fehi, ran their bikes to avoid landslides and dodged cyclone debris on the road.
But the ASU graduates say they wouldn’t have traded any of it for the world.
Pawlik is a 2013 Desert Vista High School graduate, while Meester and Richardson graduated from Mountain Pointe High in 2011. Their companion, Ellen Palczynski, is from Michigan.
“As a group, we’ve been planning this trip for over a year,” wrote Pawlik in an email from Nelson, New Zealand, the country’s second oldest city, located on the eastern shore of Tasman Bay. There, the quartet wound up their approximately 1,250-mile ride over incredibly scenic routes, and on some of New Zealand’s 10 Great Walks trails.
Saxon and Palczynski live in Los Angeles, and Pawlik and Meester work in Yosemite National Park each summer.
Meester, who graduated three years ago with a parks and recreation degree, works as a hiking guide; Pawlik, who graduated from ASU last year with a tourist development management degree, is employed at Yosemite’s historic Ahwahnee Hotel.
“We all worked for months to pay for our plane tickets, bike setups and travel costs,” said Pawlik, who began the trip Dec. 3 when she, her companions and their dissembled bicycles boarded an Air New Zealand flight.
“We’re all extremely passionate about the outdoors – rock climbing, trail running, hiking, mountain biking and road cycling. We’re quite the adventurous group,” she said.
Their adventure focused on bike-packing – traveling with all belongings stowed on the bike through an assortment of specialized racks and bags.
“It’s similar to bike touring, but what made our trip more unique is that we were on full-suspension mountain bikes and we pursued dirt roads and rough single track trails. There isn’t one trail that goes through New Zealand, so we had to ride on the roads in between our off-road adventures,” said Pawlik.
read entire story: http://www.ahwatukee.com/community_focus/article_5a436030-2892-11e8-ac92-f3f6ff1191c2.html