Fire sale; hit by a bus; vomit on the mountain

I heard somewhere that the best place to begin is at the beginning. This story would be much more boring if we did that, so we'll begin somewhere about May, 2008. We'd already made most of our friends and family think we're crazy by announcing we were moving to New Zealand. Packing two bags apiece was not easy, but it was teaching that less is more (still not sure I understand the concept, but hey--who said you have to understand your credo?)

Anyway, we unofficially put everything we owned into one of three categories: pack, store or fire sale! Some of our friends and family were even more sure we'd lost it but didn't care when they started benefiting from our mania. We had garage sales, gave away perfectly good goods (some of which I miss at this very moment), and piled our storage unit to the brim with stuff. All in the name of getting everything into one of those three categories (is there anything more satisfying than putting everything into categories?)

At the last moment it wasn't all done, so we just left and a couple of guys emailed us later saying they "took care of it". There was a goodbye fest at the airport where some of those gathered looked sad to see us go! We were sad, but remarked later how amazed we were that we had spent our emotional allowance and had the ironic urge to get on a plane and run rather than embrace and cry with those we felt we missed already.

The plane eventually left (we made a fake to the wrong terminal, but the friendly airport staff noticed and redirected us from the "Bahamas" terminal to the "other end of the earth" terminal) with us on it. In Denver we planed, then were told to deplane because someone had driven a baggage bus into the plane. Yes, I know it sounds funny to you. But that was the beginning of a very long night for us. We laid on the floor in Denver for a couple of hours, then planed again, then arrived at LAX about 2:45 late. That led to a dash across the airport, dragging kids and carry-ons, outside dodging airport shuttles (which I'm told are slower than just running across the airport from terminal to terminal), only to go through security at the international terminal and finally miss our plane by ten minutes. But we were glad because we were sweating so much--holy cow we would have been self-conscious on that 12.5 hr flight across the Pacific. Phew! Thank goodness for small favors.

So we tramped back across the airport, got free room and board from United (they spent a lot of money on us--Damon asked whether the guy who hit our plane got fired). And got on the very next flight 24 hours later.

We landed in Auckland at about 5:30 am local time, and went to our hotel. The taxi van didn't think he could carry 12 bags, a big pile of carry-ons and two bike boxes, but I asked him to try and he surprised himself. I had a meeting later that day and the rest of the time was spent wandering the streets pretty bleary-eyed. the next day we picked up our rental, a minivan. I thought I'd finally driven my last when I came up with the plan to get rid of everything we owned and move to NZ, but I was wrong. And someone thought it would be funny to make the next minivan I was to drive have a right-sided steering wheel. I thought it was funny until I tried to drive it. Not as easy as you'd think.

OK, to get move this story to a merciful end I'll say the drive was beautiful. 8 hrs of winding pavement through country that just doesn't do well with a simple list of adjectives. Expletives might actually be better, but then what would you all think of me?

The highlight of the drive was the final 3 hrs, which got increasingly twisted, with very exposed cliff-side turns up and down steep (but remember beautiful) hillsides (or they might be mountains, I'm not sure). All this while driving on the left side of the road! Ta-da! I'd like to say I did it with one hand tied behind my back, but that hand was actually quite occupied white-knuckling the steering wheel. the last hr and a half was in the dark, a couple kids got queasy and right after a hurried shout to roll down the window (it's a rental) Damon coughed up his dinner in spectacular style at 50 miles per hour around a steep mountain road. We pulled off and all got out to catch our breath and bust a gut laughing at the side of the car, which looked like a bird (with airplane food in its belly) had hit our car at terminal velocity. I'd post a pic (yup, we took a really good one), but all of the pics we took in the two weeks leading up to and during our journey were tragically lost. But that's another story.