One last ride: The race to reunite a dying man and his beloved bike

The beloved bike on which Rob Appleton rode the length of the country for charity has been stolen. He now has six months to live and is hoping to give Big Jeff one last ride. He shares his story with Jogai Bhatt.

Rob Appleton remembers the moment he crossed the finish line in Bluff. The 59-year-old had ridden the length of New Zealand in 24 days, covering more than 100 kilometres each day, to raise money for Pet Refuge as part of Tour Aotearoa.

It was the cycling adventure of a lifetime. And according to Rob, it wouldn't have been possible without Big Jeff - his second-hand, red Surly Bridge Club bike, lovingly named for its chunky tyres.

Big Jeff was perfect: sturdy, with drop handlebars and a distinctive coating. It was a timely purchase in 2020, just six months before the tour began.

Of course, Rob, a cyclist his entire life, had already collected an impressive number of bikes by that point. But the Trade Me listing for Big Jeff was just too tempting. Rob reached out to a bloke in Raglan and bought the bike immediately.

In 2021, Big Jeff carried Rob on his 3000km journey, all the way from Cape Reinga to Bluff.

His daughter, Kate, remembers the feeling of seeing her nearly 60-year-old dad on such an adventure.

"It was bloody awesome to see him; I really loved his daily updates. He'd show pictures of his day and they would always include so much cool scenery, and there'd always be a picture of his dog George.

"George and [Rob's partner] Ana were following him in a campervan along the way, and George was quite a trooper throughout that because he found the whole journey sitting in a van very exhausting.

"But yeah, it made me think, I haven't done anything cool with my life, so I need to do this ride one day, too. I'll need to do a hell of a lot of training."

For Rob, the idea to do Tour Aotearoa was sparked one day at work. A community mental health nurse for 33 years, one day one of his colleagues mentioned that a client was doing the cycle tour.

Rob's ears pricked up - he loved cycling, and it was cool to track this client's progress on a GPS tracker.

"Every day, I would log into the computer and see where this client was, and she completed it. I was nearing 60 years old and I thought, if she can do it, I don't have any excuse."

By the time she had completed the tour, the seed had been sown, and Rob knew he would do it too one day.

"From time to time during my life, I've embarked on these mad ventures on my pushbike, and so I thought, this could be yet another adventure. That was the seed of it, really."

The journey followed a combination of cycle trails, tracks, paths and lanes connected by beautiful country roads. George and Ana were right there behind them, offering food and supplies and a place to sleep at the end of each cycling day.

It was smooth sailing - almost. As Rob was biking out of Harihari on the West Coast, on the final stretch of his South Island trail, he and Big Jeff faced a bit of an incident involving a couple of "feral" dogs.

"I was passing a barn property, these two dogs came racing out and they followed me along the fence line. I thought, 'Oh yeah, this is cool.' Then they slipped under the fence and started chasing me down the road. I thought, 'You little buggers.' I tried to outpace them, but they were keeping up with me."

Then, Rob was saved by an unlikely source.

"My ride was powered by OSM bars. I would have four to five of them a day, roughly one an hour. At a certain point [of the chase], I realised I had this half-eaten OSM bar in my back pocket, so I just tossed it like a grenade onto the road, and it distracted them sufficiently for me to be able to get away.

"If I didn't have that OSM bar, I have a feeling I would've been in for a mauling. One of them was a big dog."

Rob and Big Jeff survived the incident, and completed their great adventure.

A couple of years later, Rob decided to move to Christchurch. Kate, and her partner Lewis, were coincidentally moving down around the same time. Rob and Ana would soon be living in an apartment, and he already had a few extra bikes. He knew it was time to downsize.

Rob lent Big Jeff to Lewis on a long-term loan, and Lewis happily rode it to work every day. Big Jeff was fast, and Lewis took very good care of it.

Then one day, in August 2023, the bike was stolen from Kate and Lewis' flat.

"It didn't fully hit me [when it got stolen], but Lewis was filled with guilt," Kate says.

"He was like, 'Oh no, I'm gonna have to tell Rob, I can't believe this. I feel terrible.' But dad took it really well."

Rob thought maybe the theft was a sign to get a new bike - contents insurance had covered the cost, and he had the money to replace it.

But in the end, Rob did not buy another: Big Jeff was irreplaceable.

Since the theft, tragedy struck. Just a month after moving to Christchurch in November 2023, approximately a week before Christmas, Rob found out he had stage four esophageal cancer.

"I was aware there was something going on internally because I was a long-term donator of platelets. In October, my haemoglobin levels suddenly plunged, and they were like, 'We're sorry, you can't donate today. Get yourself to a doctor and sort it out.'"

An endoscope and CT scan confirmed the devastating news.

"Initially, they thought that it was operable, but once they looked at the CT scan, they discovered it was grade four and it had gone to my glands. It was quite traumatic really, being told that."

Rob then had the tough job of delivering the news to his family.

"My partner was devastated, and my parents are still alive. My father took it very badly - my mum was okay, she's a bit of a stoic - but dad tends to wear his heart on his sleeve these days."

Kate was at work when she heard the news. Her phone was on silent, and Lewis had been trying to reach her. After a bit of phone tag, he finally got a hold of her.

"He said, 'I'm downstairs' and I was like, 'Oh, you're at work?' because he doesn't work close to me. I came downstairs and he said, 'I think you're finishing work for the day.' He took me to these hidden oak trees in the carpark and told me, and I just lost it.

"Ana was there, and I immediately got on the phone with my sister, Grace, who lives in Wales. I said, 'I think you need to book a flight to come here now, because I think we need to spend one last Christmas with dad.'"

It was a horrible day, but the Appletons did not want to remember it that way. That very same day, Rob decided he would not be going back to work - so Kate threw him a retirement party.

"We asked the person in the shop to put 'Happy Retirement' on it. We were like, you might not get to 65 to get your Gold Card, but let's retire. We partied with bubbles and this giant black forest cake, and tried to make something out of a really horrible, awful day."

Rob was given a prognosis of about three months, without treatment. It was a time of great uncertainty - he was deeply unwell, had difficulty swallowing, was in quite a lot of internal pain, and had lost a great deal of weight.

"I was just wasting away," Rob says.

Towards the end of January 2024, he learned there had been an error with his referral. It had not gone through, so he engaged with a private oncologist who started him off on his first dose of chemotherapy, and continued with the referral to oncology.

Since then, Kate has been on a mission to reunite her dad with his beloved Big Jeff.

She reported the theft to the police and 529 Garage - a registration service for bikes that records serial numbers and photos. Together with Lewis, they had searched the internet for hours looking for clues, on Reddit and Facebook Marketplace and TradeMe listings.

She has had no luck so far, but is not losing hope. And neither is Rob.

If Big Jeff is somehow found, Rob wants to go on one last adventure.

"Ideally, if I was to do one last ride, it would be Sound to Sound, from Queen Charlotte Sound to Milford Sound, but that's completely unrealistic and deconditioned to cycling.

"I still cycle around town, Christchurch is a great cycling city - it's also a great city for stolen bikes unfortunately. Probably just a cycle around Hagley Park would be beautiful."

And Kate will be right there beside him.

"I'll probably be on my crappy bike that was free off the side of the road with a sign on it. That's kind of my dream."

Have you seen Big Jeff? Get in touch at socialmedia@rnz.co.nz