If you think of a typical mid-life crisis, most think of a new sports car, an affair or changing your career.
But Northlander, Vaughan Rowsell, has taken his to a whole new level.
He had not ridden a bike for 20 years, and decided to cycle the length of New Zealand, uphill, from the bottom up.
He started in Stewart Island four weeks ago, and he just reached Auckland today.
For Vaughan, the first few days were the hardest.
“I think I was in Balclutha on day three and I really wanted to give up,” he says.
“I’d just done a 100 k day and an 80 k day, which was the longest I’d ever cycled in my entire life and I was physically empty.”
As well as that, his two young daughters were missing their Daddy.
“I got the phone call from my eldest, absolutely in tears, ‘Daddy I want you to come home’ - and that was hard.”
“It was kind of like Groundhog Day for a while, everyday seemed the same, I’d get up feeling absolutely shattered, get on a bike, ride some hills curse the hills, feel like giving up,” he says.
“Then everyday - I don't know if it was endorphins - but I’d reach a point where I was on top of the world and I could just do it.”
Vaughan had set himself this mission to break out of bad habits.
“I think my last check up was a bit of an eye opener, when the doctor threw words around like ‘morbidly obese’.”
So he got up off his backside, and out on a bike - and he does this odd sort of commentary as he goes along.
“You see here's the thing; if you don't get off your ass and get out and do things, then you don't get to see things like this.”
So besides talking to animals, the sea, or passers by - what does Vaughan do while he's riding?
“It started off with you know, getting a song stuck in your head - not the whole song, just half a verse like a broken record - and then after that might be a place name that I’m heading for,” he says.
“I'll just say it over and over and over again.”
“One of the things I started doing was giving names to things I hated, like hills and wind because without names you can't hate them.
“I named my first hill frank, way back when I was starting training and so that sort of stuck with every hill.”
The hardest bit for Vaughan so far was the middle of the North Island.
“I think every day, going down a hill, that's fun. It never wears off, never get tired of going down hills.”
Vaughan has lost twenty kilos, and raised $500,000 for a charity called Task, which helps people with spinal injuries.
He finishes in Cape Reinga next week so has lots of landmarks to give nicknames too between here and there.