Oz Open and the Begining of an Open Road Adventure

Snowy and I got back from NZ a little over a week ago and I have been meaning to update my blog and I have no excuse why it has taken so long, I just didn't do it. Anyways, I will first briefly give an account of working at the OZ Open. It was pretty full on for the two weeks I was working there, I worked about 60 hrs a week and did pretty much nothing outside of work. My job wasn't exactly exciting, I worked in Corporate Hospitality; this basically meant I prepared one of the dining rooms before each meal and showed the corporate guests to their seats then gave them water when they were leaving. Other people working in Corporate Hospitality actually got to work in Rod Laver Arena so they got to watch pretty much every match. So despite my job being less than thrilling, it was still an amazing experience and just being at the Open was exciting and there was a great positive energy. I also got to catch a couple of matches after work. Another bonus was that the dining room I was working in was adjacent to the practice court so I got to see some pretty impressive athletes training. The main lesson I took away from the Oz open was that Australians don't appreciate my chanting "USA USA" when Americans are victorious.

What I think is even more exciting then working at the Open, is my recent trip to NZ. The morning after the Oz Open ended Snowy and I boarded an early flight to Christchurch. We had scheduled to pick up a wicked camper, but the only catch was we had to pick it up by 4 pm NZ time (2 hrs later then Oz time). For those of you that aren't familiar with Wicked Vans, they are probably the most "basic" (and that's putting it kindly) camper van accommodation you can get. They target backpackers and I think most of their clients are 20 something boys, just guessing by the crude pictures that are painted on the sides of most vans. Anyways, our flight got in around 3 pm NZ time, and unfortunately it took about 45 mins longer to get out of the airport, with customs and such, than we had planned. We called Wicked Campers as soon as we realized we were going to be late and there was no answer, which was not a good sign; we decided the best thing we could do would be to just go to the garage and hope there was someone there late to give us our van. In the taxi on the way there we considered the very likely possibility that we may be spending the night in Christchurch, which would be very bad for a couple of reasons: 1, we are cheap and wouldn't pay for accommodation, sleeping in parks isn't that dangerous right? 2, Not getting our van would put us a whole day behind our planned driving route and 3, We had already payed for the day's rental. Luckily, to our relief their was someone at the garage when we got there, but she was not very happy to see us. When we told her we were sorry we were late and that we were there to pick up a van her exact words were " Are you F***ing kidding me", no we were not kidding. We feared that she might out of spite give us this van that had paintings of people doing some rude things to subs on the side, but we fortunately got a van with the unoffensive popeye painted on the side. We got a very quick run down of the van, like how to convert our table into a bed, where the kitchen was (our trunk), and how to change a flat tire. It was about 6 minute tutorial and we were off on the open road, well a quick stop at the grocery store and the gas station and then we were on the open road. Snowy took the first shift of driving, and the only real confusion with driving on the opposite side of the car and the opposite side of the road was that when we tried to use our turn signal the windshield wipers went on instead.
This is just the first installment of hat will prove to be a very long blog about our NZ road trip.

Cheers,
Laura