Beloved groaned… but said “Yeah… what?”
All props go to this woman. For 30 years she’s put up with this. If our roles were reversed, I’d be divorced, living in a crappy little apartment, because I would’ve dumped my ass years ago.
I am what those personality tests refer to as an “activator”. My brain seizes on what it perceives is an excellent idea and in a very short period of time I have all the details worked out – I know how to execute, what pitfalls might arise, what alternatives exist… I see things in four dimensions.
Then I want to make it happen. Like, now.
So, the day we’re to leave on a trip to New Zealand to see a few World Cup games, I’m flipping through Trip Advisor… at 4am… and learn the seats on the Northern Rail are hard, uncomfortable and there’s stinkin’ little legroom.
Ew, thinks my brain. That’s not attractive. Aaaaaaaand it’s off.
So our original plans were to head to the Glow worm caves in Waitomo the Monday after we arrived. It meant schlepping to a downtown hotel from our AirBnB, ready to go at 6:15 am. Unngh. Eight hours later, most of which on a motorcoach (you get like 45 minutes in the caves then it’s back on de bus) they drop you back a that hotel.
We’re flying to Wellington halfway through to see another match, then we were gonna take that train (11 hours) up to Auckland again.
Well, sheet. If it’s that uncomfortable on the train, and we’re also doing a seven hour RT on a bus, why… not… drive… ourselves?
Hell, I drive in England on a regular basis. That’s not even with automatic transmission, I go whole hog and rent manuals. The whole thing, aside from the pedals, are a mirror image of a US vehicle. Pedals are the same as is the location of the gears (top left is 1st etc), just to confuse the crap outta you.
It’s an 8.5 hour drive from Wellington to Auckland, and, I figured, we could stop overnight near the glow worm caves. Head to the caves in the morning before all those bus loads of people show up, then drive up to Auckland. Heh. Heh. Heh.
Add to that, we save almost NZ$400 (about US$240) by changing.
So I was mighty gleeful, thinking about how amazing this was gonna be. Thank the LORD Beloved is willing to swing with just about anything, because my brain, once it’s in overdrive, doesn’t quit. Schedule now rearranged, car reserved, refunds on train and bus, we’re good…
We arrived in NZ and the location… is… awesome. We have an AirBnB across the street from Eden Park, the national stadium. It’s crazy. There were almost 42,000 people at the last game here, they close the streets and we’ll just stroll over when we’re ready.
I want to be able to nip out at halftime to use the loo – when we went to games in Paris at the last WWC, the lines were horrendous. Beloved says they won’t allow it, but I’m gonna ask.
We spent a day walking around Auckland’s Central Business District… it looks like Boston when they were in the midst of the Big Dig. Roadworks EVERYWHERE.
Not only that, Auckland is weirdly like Los Angeles in that you just don’t expect these super-steep hills. There’s no funicular, either, just a lot of hiking.
We did a self-guided walking tour and one stop was Albert Park (the city was largely formed by Brit expats in the 1840s onward, so there’s a lot of Victoria and Albert). We hiked up to it and were faced with… a precipice. Holy cats. No park is that good when you’re on track to hit 15,000 steps. We decided to admire it from a distance, most of it uphill.
Drat, the FIFA Fan Zone was closed because there were no games on that day, but we were able to get a picture in front of the giant football.
We’re now sitting here waiting to head over – Beloved is getting fidgety, she’s already gone and walked around the stadium. Me, I walked to the supermarket this morning and I’m damned if I’m gonna waste precious energy wandering around a closed stadium we’ll be entering in a few hours.
It’s Spain vs Switzerland tonight – out of respect I wanted to learn the national anthems for those teams we see play. Damn, Germany won’t be one, I love Deutschland Uber Alles, ratso the Germans are out.
So while at home, knowing one was Switzerland, I you-tubed their anthem. Got it in four languages, none of which was English.
I’ve sung in other languages, but it’s just not as intuitive as when you sing in English, if you don’t understand the words. It’s a pretty tune, but…
So I howled through the four versions in German, Italian, French and Bulgarian or something equally esoteric, thoroughly mangling the words. I imagine they’ll sing in German, but who knows?
Then… looking up the Spanish national anthem…
“Spain is one of only two countries whose national anthem has no lyrics.”
Whuuuut? I mean, I can manage Spanish, having been in Los Angeles for more than a half-century. What a rip-off.
Beloved won’t admit she heaved a sigh of relief, but the cat would. I think MaeMae got kinda sick of me attempting to be patriotic in languages in which I had no business singing.
Three hours to kickoff. One before we walk over there.
Examining Misadventures 