Mikie Linch Trip Report #5

After almost 2 straight days of sleep after the ball I departed from Roy's house to Taupo, where I was going to stay for a week with one of the boys from my house named Ged Watts. I was traveling by "The Naked Bus". Now I know what you're thinking and no you don't have to be naked on the bus (Thank God). I actually have no idea why they call it the Naked Bus but they do. So I rode the Naked Bus for the 2 hour trip to Taupo.

Ged's mom (or ‘Mum’ as he informed me), picked me up and gave me a quick tour of the town. It was a little small compared to what I'm used to back home, but overall it was a nice town. But nice wouldn't describe their house. The house was AMAZING!!! It had an awesome view of the lake, which is the biggest Crater Lake in the world. His dad is one of the most successful contractors in Taupo so it makes sense they have a cool house.

For the 1st time since I've been here I got to sleep in a big bed. I probably had the best night sleep, that first night, than I've had in many months. I also had another experience that I haven’t had in a long time. I was driven in a car with the driver on the left side. During the whole ride I just kept saying, "Man it's good to see one car that has the seats on the correct side." Then his family would say something about New Zealand splitting the atom first or how they have the best rugby team in the world. Then I'd wait about 5 minutes and then say something else about the seats and the argument would start all over again.

The 1st couple of days there were uneventful. We just hung around the house, went on a few drives and made a couple of fires (the fires were in a fire pit so don’t think I'm setting some foreign country ablaze).

Ged took me to the movies one night and boy was that an experience. I've been to the movies a few times since I've been here but every time it was at a reasonably large movie theatre. This one had all of 3 screens and a concession stand and that was about it. But I didn’t dare say anything bad about it because Ged's dad was the person who built it. There was another 1st for me in that movie theatre. They were serving wine and beer at the movies. I guess it's just the New Zealand way. But it was a good night out.

During my stay with the Watts family I met a lot of the relatives. On Wednesday that week, Ged's Aunt and 5 year old cousin came to stay at the house. It was a little awkward for a little bit, but they were nice people and seemed to want to know everything about the states. At meals it seemed like I was on the hot seat the whole time but I just figured my family would be doing the same thing if a kid from New Zealand stayed at our house so I was fine with it. They were just curious about what my life was like back home.

His parents and Ged are actually quite keen to come to San Diego and L.A. in the near future. They were really nice and did everything they could to make me feel at home. His mom even went out and bought sparklers for me and Ged on the 4th of July. It was a pretty interesting 4th of July. I spent most of it trying to explain baseball to Ged and his mom. She said if it weren’t for it raining we could have done a 4th of July barbeque and I could have shown them how it's done.

That rain actually kept me from doing a lot of things. We were planning on going out on his boat at some point but it was raining everyday I was there except the day I got there and the day I left, which were the 2 days that we couldn’t go out. I guess it was just a little bad luck.

The last day I was there was easily the most exciting day though, and not because I was leaving. Ged and I went to a 4x4 track but it wasn't like just a big circle like I thought it was going to be. It was all throughout the bush. So we were going up and down these hills with like the jungle around us. It was one of the coolest things I've done since I've been here.

And since it had been raining the whole week there were a lot of puddles. And these weren’t the little San Diego puddles. These were "almost get stuck in them because they're so deep" puddles. But it was awesome because if you hit them with enough speed you could get like a wave of mud that would go over your head. And believe me I hit those puddles with some speed. It was a lot of fun and something that if I ever come back out here I want to do again.

I left pretty much right after I got back to Ged's house, to embark on my second expedition on the Naked Bus. This was not the last time I would be riding on a bus for long periods of time on these holidays. Taking the bus was one of the best but in a way one of worst decisions of this trip. It was nice because I got to see a lot of sights and for the most of the time a comfortable way to travel. But it just took FOREVER to get anywhere.

And on all of my trips we stopped at the same place. The Rotorua travel center became almost a second home to me. I probably spent easily an hour and a half there during the holidays. I could probably be a tour guide through their gift shop now. Also it was really funny because on the last bus trip, it was the first time I had to sit next to somebody.

So I sat next to this little Maori kid, who couldn’t have been more then like 9 years old. But when he fell asleep the kid just snored like a dying animal. I had headphones in and they were pretty loud and I could still easily hear this kid snoring. I found myself laughing a few times about it. I just couldn’t believe that anyone could produce noises like he did.

I arrived back at Hamilton on Friday night and just went back to Roy's and went to sleep. On Saturday I just had a lazy day. I didn’t really do much until late that night when we watched the 4th Tri Nations match between Australia and South Africa.

To me being able to watch live international games on T.V. is one of the coolest things about being out here. I think before I came here I had seen 2 live games. Since I've been here I have seen a live game almost every week. This will be one of the things I think I will miss most after I leave.

But back to my travels; On Sunday I left Roy's house to take the bus, not the Naked Bus this time, to Opotiki. I was meeting another one of the guys from the house, Jared Anglesey. It was a solid 4 1/2 hour bus ride to Opotiki but I was able to sleep through most of it.

It was getting late by the time I got to Coco's (that’s what his nickname is and don’t ask me why because I don’t know) so I just unpacked my stuff watched some T.V. and went to bed. The next day Coco was taking his driving test for his full license, so we had to go to Whakatane which is about an hour away. I was pretty much left alone there for 2 hours or so I just walked around the town, went into some shops and just hung around till he was done. In case you're wondering he passed, so now he could legally drive me around town.

I didn’t really get to see the view from Coco's house the night before but it was quite a view. It looked right out over the ocean. I was pretty lucky that both houses I went to had great views. His family was also really nice. But they also put me on the hot seat, but it was expected. His house is also attached to their kiwi-fruit orchard. Unfortunately I just missed picking season, but what that did mean was that they had tons of kiwi-fruit around the house. I have never eaten so much fruit in my life.

The next day two other guys from school came over and for some reason we decided to go golfing. Now golfing, which is normally considered a boring sport, is very dangerous when it's played between 3 17 year olds especially when you give them golf carts.

On more then one occasion you could see our carts flying down the fairway next to each other with golf balls being launched in between them. We almost flipped the cart once or twice but overall it was a lot of fun. And ya - we also played a bit of golf too while we were there. About the game let's just say the PGA doesn't have anything to worry about. But I did win the $5 dollar bet by hitting one of our golf carts from more then 100 yards away.

The next 2 days we just hung around the house and enjoyed being lazy. We played some videogames, had some guys come over, he showed me the town, and just sat around. The town wasn’t too much to write home about. It was one or two streets with a couple of shops and 2 gas stations and that was about it.

The next day which was my last full day in Opotiki we drove up to Rotorua because they have this thing called "The Luge" there. This was again one of the more fun things I've done here. It's basically a mountain with cement tracks on it and you ride down them on these little 3 wheel cart type things.

It's hard to explain, it lies flat on the ground and the way to make it move is you pull back on the handle bars and it lifts the front part of the cart off the ground which allows you to move. Then to slow down you just pull further back and it slows down. It was funny because the only thing the people there did to make sure you were "qualified" to ride these things was before you went down the track they would make sure you could pull the handle bars back so you could slow down, and that was it.

They were so much fun though. I was thinking they would be pretty slow but man these things could move. I was shocked at how fast they were going, and the handling on them was just as surprising. I must admit I was able to get the thing on 2 wheels more then once during a turn and then whip it back down once the turn was over. The turns were impressive too.

When I first heard about it I thought it would be wide turns and there would be like padded railing and stuff, boy was I wrong. There were incredibly sharp turns and if you didn’t make a lot of the turns you would find yourself rolling down a very large hill. Luckily I was able to make all the turns and came out of the experience uninjured.

The next day I left Opotiki. This was when I had the li’l snorer, as I like to call him, sitting next to me on the bus.

I got back to Hamilton on Friday around 3 P.M. and Roy told me that there was a Waikato (preseason vs. Taranaki) game at 7 and we were going to go. The game unfortunately wasn't that good. Waikato didn’t really have a back line and the other team was able to take advantage of that.

I saw some good play on both sides but it was a messy game overall. That wasn’t the last bit of rugby I would be watching. The next day Roy took me to watch the old club that he played for, Hamilton Old Boys, play their biggest rivals, Frasier Tech.

Unlike the Waikato game this was very fun to watch. It was a back and forth battle between the Old Boys and Frasier's Fullback, who either scored or assisted in scoring all of their points. The game ended in a tie 36-36 after Frasier's fullback scored during stoppage time.

After watching that game I have seen live the top 4 levels of New Zealand rugby. Tonight I plan on watching the All Blacks play South Africa, which hopefully will end in a win for New Zealand. I know only have 3 more weeks in the country and only 2 more weeks of school. It's getting close to the end and I'm both looking forward to coming home but also dreading leaving at the same time.

Mikie

Mikie Linch