A Grand Day Out

Today I went on a jolly with Wayne up to Auckland to pick up his stuff. Unfortunately they've used a right set of muppets to get their stuff over, and have to pick it up themselves. We set of at 8AM, picked up a trailer en route and the made the mistake of trying to get down Hewlett's road at rush hour. Bad mistake. We did a U turn and took highway 2 instead - much better idea and only slightly longer. Di rang to tell me she'd scraped the Mirth Mobile on a protruding piece of concrete. Apparently it "would come out with T-Cut". Yeah, right. She was hoping that telling me now would allow sufficient time and anger to pass before I actually saw the damage!

The journey up to Auckland was uneventful, passing through Paeroa, home of the World Famous in New Zealand Lemon & Paeroa. We stopped off for some late breakfast and a couple of lemon slices for later on. We arrived about 12ish, but the person who was dealing with it all was at lunch. Half an hour later, we had the paperwork sorted and were off to the depot to collect.

There were three pallets in total, but none would fit in the van without being partially taken to pieces, so my trusty swiss army knife was put to good work. It was a hot day, and we were both parched, so we picked up a large bottle of mineral water and appropriately enough given our route up here, a bottle of L&P. It's basically lemonade, despite the hype, but without being too sweet or fizzy. The other moment of note was the usage of the water deficient plastic portaloo on a hot sunny day. No description I could possibly give would do this justice.

The drive back was similarly uneventful, other than missing a turning on highway 2, which resulted in us taking highway 27 for a while before getting back on track. A quick stop for some diesel, and we got back to the Mount at around 7. We made a quick stop at Woolworths for some beers, and then back to W's to unload and wind down with a beer or three and reflect on our day's labours. And then home to inspect the damage to the Mirth Mobile.