Man, you take road trips with passion.

So its 10am on Tuesday 17th. My mum says “It would be good for you to get out of the house”. It’s funny how the biggest/best journeys start with the smallest steps.

I decide to take mums suggestion to the extreme and no less than thirty minutes later I’m sitting in a rental car with eternal good mates Guy and Tony travelling north… with passion.

A quick stop at Harcourt park to check out Dad’s Omaru stone carving, which appears to be coming along nicely. He sends us on our way with the best hand gesture ever invented, meanwhile feminists everywhere cringe, and the lads laugh for the next few thousand kilometres. Hilarious, as always Dad. Again and again I ask the question “Is there anything he can’t do”? The resounding answer, as always, is simply “No”.

Dads Carving

In Otaki, we stopped off at Tony’s auntie’s place; we eat egg salad and coo at some baby swans.

During our drive through the Taranaki region we visit Tony’s country in-laws and after a vomit inducing drive down a lost highway find ourselves late for dinner at Whangamomona Hotel. A Three course meal and a few beers later, we are feeling pretty fucking satiated. Sleep time. Awesome.

The Hotel

The next morning what I had thought for the past three days was constipation turned in to an epic day of three different medical professionals copping a feel of my testiculi. Finally the surgeon at New Plymouth hospital confirms what I kinda thought all along. Namely that I don’t have a hernia, I’d simply torn an “FM” during an all night bender, refer last Sundays entry…

Eventually after tiring of having my testicles felt up by men in white gloves we make it to Hamil-shit – a town punctuated by its pure shittiness. We stayed with friends that were seemingly oblivious to the aforementioned shittiness – i.e. they had actually bought a house to live in there. Seriously each to their own but Hamil-shit is just not for me Jon and Lisa.

It was great to see young Chizzy again. He is thriving and looking well, we drank the organic beer we picked up at a crazy little brewery on the way to Hamil-shit earlier in the day. Yes that’s right ladies and gentlemen; earlier in the day, in fact mere hours after being discharged from hospital I was visiting a brewery.

The next morning was the day of The Big Day Out, so we drove to Auckland, a town punctuated by its unadulterated and unwarranted superiority complex. In my opinion, the only thing complex about this city is getting from place to place.

This is me in Hamil-shit.

We find our way to Guys sister Sophie’s place without too much trouble. We grab Tony’s BDO ticket from Sophie’s letter box; it’s been couriered there because Tony is awesome… at forgetting important shit. He would seriously forget his own balls on the way to an orgy if they weren’t in a bloody sack.

We park the car, Guy has a beer and proceeds to use the “peer pressure” technique followed by the “I will give you money” technique to convince me to come to the BDO, it works cause I’m a proud capitalist at heart. We head to the building that says “Railway Station” in big-ass letters, we’re so smart. Of course the people inside laugh at us as they tell us that this is not actually a train station. Fucking funny bastards if you ask me.

Tracking down the actual train station with the help of MAX - the friendly bus timetable company - we eventually board a train. Going on our present luck it might not have been an actual train, though it appeared to get us to our destination and acted very train-like.

The sun is hotter than your mum so I grease myself up… in sunscreen. There are still door sales so I guess there is no pulling out now.

Things I did/Bands I saw etc

- Went to the inflatable bar, weird.
- The Living End – quite rocking
- Purved, got some food, wandered around avoiding ex’s and workmates, looked at stuff.
- Elemeno P – didn’t live up to expectation
- The Brunettes – Heather will you marry me?
- Henry Rollins – he doesn’t like GW bush, sweet.
- Wolfmother – awesome, awesome, awesome – I bought the CD.
- Iggy and the Stooges – I foresee many more years for that machine of a man.
- White Stripes – a bit too instrumental but still awesome.

So it’s on the train and back to reality. Because we are in Auckland, it turns out our train does not go to the station we came from so we get off at Newmarket and walk down a street called Parnell Rd hoping it goes to Parnell, thankfully it does.

Sophie is awesome; I think I will marry her. Her shower was a welcome sight and cleanliness soon followed. Her flatties were having a few drinks but we were too tired to really participate, so we all piled in to Sophie’s room and slept like babies.

All praise to Sophie for taking us to a decidedly nice and non-wanky place for brunch, I got French toast smothered in bacon and maple syrup; it was just what I wanted, Sophie is Ō for awesome.

We arrived in Pahia about 7pm after a leisurely drive stopping off at two places, firstly a really nice beach for a swim and a spot of Frisbee and secondly stopping at some nature reserve with a big cliff and a few Ram’s with large sacs, Tony insisted on taking photos. At this point we recorded a few Maori myths and legends from a book Tony bought on audio, they’re awesome I’ll post them.

Us at really nice beach

Tonys gratuitous sac pic

We stayed with Tony O’Conner whose family was very hospitable. Later on that night we ate fish n chips and got drunk. We went to this dodgy bar called the Lighthouse or something. There was a cover charge, at first we were thinking lets go somewhere else, then upon realising that there was no where else to go we paid up and went in. I was king of pool holding on to the table for quite some time until I gave it away due to a Wet T-Shirt competition beginning. Perving followed, then the sense that this sort of thing really should be illegal and probably is, but this is northland and nobody cares. There are lots of photos – Tony was holding the camera – but I won’t post them.

The walk home was interspersed with howls of Wolfmother “Come and see the minds eye, we can find it if we try” and other heavy metal acts performed by yours truly on a rickety picnic table. Colossal. Oh and Guy played front spoon that night.

Wolfmother himself, i.e. me

After a splendid breakfast we set off to explore the birth place of our wonderful nation. The Waitangi grounds were simply fantastic, there was an inspiring sense of history everywhere and I read every single word on every single sign, go on test me. In summary; the flag pole is bloody colossal, the view breathtaking, and the entry price worth every penny.

Colossal flagpole.

Inspiring sense of history.

Following our serious trek through the birth canal of our nation we needed some light relief. So Guy drove the car for a few kilometres, cue laugh track.

We met up with Lucy, Tommy, and Alex, some British siblings with a campervan that we met at the aforementioned wet t-shirt competition, they like us, did not compete. What followed was the single most amazing mini-golfing experience in existence. Seriously if you get the chance to play the Paihia mini-golf course do it, you will not regret it. Allow 2 hours if your group is like 5 people or more and expect to pull off shots like the so named “axe attack” where by one holds the club with a two handed axe grip and strikes downward on the ball thus causing the ball to pop skyward out of the sand trap, complex man. This is one course where a working knowledge of trigonometry just isn’t enough, you’ll practically need Stephen Hawking doing the calculations to stay out of the bunkers, pity his wheelchair wouldn’t be able to navigate the course.

There were hot chicks too

We ate curry for dinner then Guy played front spoon again.

The longest drive ever:
So we had one day to get from Paihia to Wellington because Guy had work the next day. We left at 9am, to the tune of our Maori language pronunciation CD and got petrol in Auckland, sure we had to ask for directions to get out but we found one friendly stranger that even took off her sun glasses to speak to me and tell me how to get back to the motorway – how polite.
We had lunch in Cambridge, there was a statue of a horse but we didn’t get a picture of me riding it. We played mini-golf in Taupo and picked up young Chizzy’s cousin Sarah, swam in the lake and ate burger king.

Only one of us saw the Taniwha on the lake.

We reached Wellington at about 12am, epic.

The end.