Friday, 14 March 2008

The Caffeine Overload Tour of '08!

Last week, I slept in 6 different beds over 6 nights. That's kinda gross.

I have been travelling around the country touting our new system around our branches. So far I have done Auckland and the North Shore, then Wellington, followed by a lovely trip up to Wanganui and New Plymouth.


Having never been to the latter two cities?towns? I was quite looking forward to this and was duly rewarded. I was really impressed with Wangas, what a cute little town and all old and antiquey. They also did really good coffee. New Plymouth...not as cute, but still lovely looking out to sea, and not so good coffee...but enormous for $3.50. True to form, Wellington's coffee blew my head off.


This is reminding me of that Men Behaving Badly episode where Neil gets back from Europe and Martin goes, how was it? And Neil's all...Amsterdam was good....great chips. Rome - not so great chips. Greece - chips were fantastic.


I had one minor meltdown on my tour, heading onto the motorway after a full on day's training in Auckland to get back to Tauranga. Inching along in rush hour traffic, I hear a beep. A light goes on on my dashboard. I ring my trusty step-dad.


"CC, when the thing with the periscope looking squiggle goes beep, what do I need to do?"


"Pull over," says he, and it's lucky I do, on the Hobson Street onramp at 5:15 with the traffic not dissimilar to the Indy 500, as a whole lot of smoke starts pouring out of the bonnet.


Turns out the cooling fans had stopped working causing some part to break, causing the water to get out causing it to overheat blah blah.


1 police car, 82 pages of a good book, 3 cigarettes and 1 tow truck later, I'm staying in Auckland the night again.


A mere 12 hours later I'm tentatively driving back to Tauranga, watching the engine temp gauge like it was a live snake. Stupid new car. My sister was all, I TOLD YOU SO, only buy Japanese. I'm tempted to agree.


So this weekend I'm off! again, in my stupid new car, to Taupo for a wedding of an old school friend. I have a new dress, new shoes (see previous post), newly waxed legs, and about 5% of my brain.


Then it's off! again to Dunedin for work.


Good news though...with the autumn approaching (you wouldn't know it, it was 25 degrees last night) Basil has been growing in his winter coat, and is Extra Extra fluffy. Awww. Here is a picture of his ears in silhouette. We were reading a book together.