People can be so cruel.
I have been taunted and mocked all week, with my friends who are confident, competent cyclists asking me exactly where the steep and scary bits are on the Lake Hayes Track.
Their jeering is only making me tougher.
My training programme for the Tour de Wakatipu is now storming ahead and I'm sure that by April 23, I will be able to bike down the track from Millbrook to Speargrass Flat Rd fearlessly.
I have also been asked why I read books like The Fear (see last week's column), when I don't like being afraid.
It's because reading about the bad times in our world's history reminds me how easily a beautiful place and beautiful life can be turned upside down when people don't pay attention to the things evil people are doing.
But what I'm very afraid of right now is being promoted.
My poor old editor used to run the world (well, the world of the Otago regions) with an iron fist.
We cowered and cringed when he strode with man-sized strides into the Wakatipu Basin.
Now he's been rocketed up to the dizzy heights of the day editor's penthouse office suite and has gone all metrosexual, even writing a daily column about laundry.
It's called "The Wash" and you can find it on page 2 of the Otago Daily Times.
What if I got promoted and had to write about something sensible?
Where would I start?
It's not looking like happening any time soon - I haven't even met my new editor yet. I hope he's not one of those who go on and on about facts and the checking thereof.
One fact I can tell you is that Wakatipu High School was 18th out of 122 schools at the Maadi Cup - brilliant effort from the rowers, their coaches and the fabulous parents who do so much to make it all happen.
And another great fact is the Queenstown weekend auctioned at Sydney's very smart District Dining restaurant (now known as double Ds) to raise money for Christchurch went for $8800 - a big chunk of the $75,000 total. Charlotte Dawson was the MC and eight of Sydney's top chefs made amazing canapes for the guests.
Speaking of smart dos, I have finally been invited to the royal wedding party on April 29. What a relief, although I was surprised to be invited by email and to discover it's being held in Lower Shotover Rd. I had rather imagined a heavily embossed white invitation with Buckingham Palace written somewhere on it. These young royals certainly do things differently.
Have you noticed anything unusual just by the roundabout near the New World supermarket? It's a massive Fiona Pardington work originally done for the 2009 Festival of Colour, but so beautiful the trustees decided to put it up/place it/install it? - well, exhibit it again so that people in Queenstown get a chance to enjoy it as well. Go and have a look - it's magnificent.
And tonight at Dorothy Browns in Arrowtown is going to be a real treat.
Hamish Keith, New Zealand's most famous curator and art historian, is going to be speaking about artist Tony Lane's work.
Nadene Milne has put this evening together and it's bound to be a sell-out.
Hamish wrote the first book on New Zealand art history and has always made very controversial decisions and declarations.
After 50 years at the top of his field, he is considered a bit more "establishment" these days, but he's still enormously entertaining and provocative.
I told you some time ago about A. J. MacKinnon's The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow, an Australian teacher's holiday trip in a tiny sailing dinghy from Bristol to the Black Sea.
So many of you have got back to me saying how much you enjoyed it.
The Well at the World's End.
In this book, he quits his teaching job in Australia determined to visit the Well of Eternal Youth on the Scottish island of Iona.
His determination to avoid flying made his trip a lot more arduous but the same quirky writing that makes Jack de Crow so enjoyable is equally evident in this book, and the difficulties he faces become very funny.
He fails not to fly on the first leg, which gets him to New Zealand.
It's always fascinating reading what our tourists really think of our country, and MacKinnon really hates Rotorua. He is foolish enough to tell the driver who picks him up off the side of the road what he thinks of the place, and is soon deposited at the foot of Ngaurohoe.
Because of his refusal to fly, his trip goes in all sorts of complicated directions, but somehow he makes it to the well.
His stories are marvellous and full of all sorts of weird and wonderful, and weird and horrible, characters. He has to change the names of some of them, for pretty obvious reasons.
This is not a trip very many people would want to take, but it's very addictive reading.
It's a relief to read about someone else who, while travelling, meets really infuriating or creepy people - real travel is like that. No-one wants to read travel stories about people having a simply lovely time with nothing going wrong. Those are called ads.
By now I hope you have all got over the trauma of daylight saving ending. I haven't and I'm still shocked at how dark it is in the evenings. I keep finding clocks on the old time and have a moment of panic thinking I am late. One of these years I'm going to remember which way the time changes and start getting ready for it. I think it's been about 40 years or so now since daylight saving started, and I'm not getting any closer to figuring it out.
