Odysseus, an update

So the epic saga of the little old snail from pasadena continues. After having to decline a radio interview about Odysseus due to our current locale, there are now stirrings about screenplays and getting the rights to the story. Oh my. We may yet be deciding who will play us in the movie, as Molly so gleefully jested last week. Can this get any more ridiculous? I should have put a homing device on him...

Welcome to Christchurch

Where the buses run on time, the people have even less fashion sense than Erin and I, and the pies flow freely (even the gluten-free ones). We love it here. We got our bus passes today, handed out some CVs, and trekked around the city. Tomorrow, more job pursuits and housing! The weather was absolutely fabulous, and we ended up taking off our jackets at one point because it was so warm. Apart from the attack bird that lives in Scott and Evelien's parking area, who tried to go through our car window this morning because he was so upset he'd missed us on the way in, we don't really have any complaints. They are of course feeding us very well, and the house is out in the country near a dairy farm, so we were told we could help with the calving if we wanted to... I passed.

On the ferry that crosses the Cook Strait, between the north and south islands:


"Okay Erin, look cold!"


See the little speck at the bottom of the mountain? That's my new house.

Grotty: the end

We met Teresa and Kristina (two German girls from BUNAC who were going to drive with us) at Grotty (the van) and set off at 10:30am for Palmerston North.


(This is actually a picture from the ferry, two days later. But I digress...)


We were driving along, enjoying the scenery, and the smiley face stickers on just about every flat surface.

Everything was going okay until we got to Lake Taupo and Grotty started getting confused about shifting. Then he got really confused about acceleration. Then he stalled out halfway up a hill. Actually, stalling is putting it lightly. The whole engine seized up, so that when three Maori guys pulled over to help us, they couldn't even roll it down the hill. We called a tow, but it was a Sunday, so we weren't sure how long it would take. Paul (the most talkative of the Maori fellas) sent the other two back for his truck and his tools. He managed to get the drive shaft to come out with a hammer, but had forgotten about the parking break. He miraculously was able to duck out of the way, but the van rolled past us all and slammed into his Isuzu Trooper-type vehicle. We discovered fortunately that it had done absolutely no damage to the truck, only to Grotty, who was having a distinctly bad day. Somehow we all made it backwards down the hill. After retrieving the drive shaft out of the road.
Paul offered to buy the truck off me, and I told him he could have it for a ride into town. The German girls elected to hitchhike into Palmerston North without us. The guys dropped us off at the youth hostel in Taupo and we gladly went to sleep early after a completely absurd day. We caught the first train out of Taupo this morning and we're coming into Wellington now, getting ready to catch the ferry tomorrow morning over onto the South Island.


Sitting on the roadside, trying to move the van-- in any direction.