Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Nightmare on Taupo Street

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...10AM. That's right, I decided to stay up all night and finish everything (haha, success!) before heading off and sleeping for our 8 hour bus ride at noon today.

The one time I left was to print a couple postcards (get excited) and have dinner with Jane and Cary. Jane lived up to and surpassed her last dinner, with a delicious pasta dish, chocolate covered strawberries and dark & white chocolate drizzled Oreo balls (far more smoothly shaped that the ones Ryan and I are used to). She also spoiled us with a "cass" of wine.

The day really got interesting when we jumped on the bus. Let's see, itinerary: Ah, nice! We're supposed to arrive in Tauranga at 8PM. Sounds great...

2 hours in: "Why are we turning around?"

2 hours 10min in: "Why are we turning around again?"

2 hours 12min in: "Why are we stopped?... Oh, the other bus broke down. Oh gosh, make way for the new load." Our bus went from being half-full to no vacant seats as we absorbed a bunch of people that would have been trapped on the bus that broke down. Oh well, no I'm really uncomfortable and hot but at least I'm enjoying V for Vendetta with a couple of Mouri boys around me. They loved the netbook and proceeded to pour through my music video collection after we finished the movie. I find this hilarious: their favorite artist: Lonely Island. Ya, the SNL rap group. They pumped (OK, I use the term pump very loosely as our sound system is my netbook speakers), they pumped I'm on a Boat [warning: explicit] at least twice.

5 hours in: "Why are we stopped?"

"Shhh, we just got pulled over." Yeah, I drove for a dozen hours a reckless speeds on the South Island, only to get passed by Kiwis with cars that could actually accelerate uphill, and the silly police on the North Island pull over a bus driver (making 70 ppl late) for going less that 10 over. Another point for the South Island...

7 hours in: We finally arrived in Taupo and things would have been alright if that was our end destination. Unfortunately, we had to wait for about an hour for the broken bus driver to get himself and his few remaining passengers up to Taupo.

The next leg of the trip really killed me. I was getting really antsy and miserable. Here we are, Christmas Eve, and we're stuck on a bus... Sanity was only preserved through commiseration with our neighbors.

We ended up getting picked up by Ian 30km short of Tauranga at 11:15...

We got in 10minutes shy of Christmas and welcomed in the holiday chatting away with Ian, happy to have made it.

Anyways, no running today. I did do about 40minutes of balancing and drills though in the morning.