We're Supposed To Be There.... Now

I hope that sometime in your life you have experienced the “last minute save” moment- it’s the one where you are seriously doubting that you will get there on time, but by some force of nature- [I like to think its the Big Guy upstairs] things fall into place. Well, this entire weekend was the epitome of the “last minute save”.

On Saturday afternoon a group of my friends and I decided to go to Rotorua rafting.. after a few complications, we figured out that Vaness and I could take the bus, and Mike, Mike, Amanda and Annie would be able to drive down. So, that led to last- minute bus tickets, last-minute packing, and leaving late to go catch that last-minute bus. The “last minute save” isn’t complete without a dead sprint, so Vaness and I looked down at our handy-dandy cell phones and figured out we are supposed to be at the bus station- now. [Insert dead sprint down Queen Street].

Our bus driver was an angry, angry man- but he did let us slip onto the bus pretty much as it was moving to leave. It took a solid twenty minutes for us to stop sweating/panting, but we were on our way to R-town. Angry man was supposed to stop for food, but he decided to circle the parking lot of Subway, then McDonald's, and also a gas station- without stopping. In fact, when I asked if I could run to the restroom at one of the stops, he actually shut the door on me as I tried to walk out by hitting some magic button from his chair. Rude. So, we get to Rotorua and everything is pretty much closed, except for Dominos!! So, Vaness and I go down to the wonderful beacon of glory- only to have one of the most frustrating conversations ever.
Me “and one order of cheesy garlic bread”
Her: “We’re out. Sorry.”
Me: “Um, okay, can I have some garlic bread with cheese on it.”
Her: “No, we don’t have cheese”
Me: “Like, just pizza cheese, you know- you put it on the pizza.”
Vaness: “Ya, just sprinkle it on top.” [She notices the huge tub of shredded cheese behind the cashier].
Her: “No cheese.”
Me: “Ok, so what else is there with cheese?”
Her: “Cheese on a garlic herb crust- it’s the same price.”
Me: “Okay, that.”
We then got three different sets of directions to the restroom, only to find them ourselves and also find out that they were closed.
After successfully getting our pizzas, we met up with the our friends to find a place to camp. A bit of driving led us to a spot that was satisfactory, and we all pitched our tents. Yep, flashback to girl-scout camp. I loved it though, and I’m pretty determined to camp outside on Theta’s lawn at some point of time before I graduate…. Take that Alice [For those of you who don't know Alice- she is an older Theta that runs our house board and hates me because I eat in my room, sneak in the house when its closed, and do other illegal things that are completely normal].

In the morning, we all headed to town to have a solid b-fast, and then on to our rafting adventure. Mike found out about this bad boy of a river- and that it’s only open 26 days of the year, since water needs to be released for the rapids to be wet enough to maneuver- so we already had 10am reservations. What we didn’t anticipate was the little dot on the map was a lot farther from where we were than we thought. I whipped out the business/marketing voice to talk to a very lovely woman named Cheryl to have them simmer down long enough for us to get there. Very last-minute save. We jammed out for a little while, I called again just to make sure Cheryl stuck to her word, and wha-la! We were there… about 40 minutes late. Everyone was pretty laid back and they got us our gear, but there was a little problemo. Three of the girls didn’t have their swimming suits on… and we all looked at each other and thought the same thing. “Crap. Car- oh, that’s an idea.” Soon I was changing in the car, which I thought was safe only to find out that we forgot to put a towel over the back left window… with direct view of the people on the bus. And yes, they were staring. So, I put my shoes on the wrong foot [not on purpose, but it was the heat of the moment] and as soon as I got on the bus, one of the Irish dudes looks at me and says, “Ya, we saw everything.” No last-minute save on that one.

So, I’ve never rafted, and grade 5 sounds pretty intimidating. We made our way to the entry point of the river, and I knew this was going to be good. Vaness and I went in a raft with Tony and Dave. They were both Irish and “Traveling the World”, and I was thinking of recruiting Tony for the Colts. He was about 220 lbs and was positioned right across from me on the raft. In my eyes this could be a good or bad thing- I easily could go flying off, or he could almost take me off and go off. Luckily the latter happened. Ya, big last-minute save. We ended up taking a rapid backwards [Which Barry, our guide, said that he has never done in the 23 some years he had been on the river]. Tony said to me, “I’m going over. [Plus a few explicatives]” and then rolled on top of me, and then off the raft. It got a little tense, since the guides were all in survival mode, and they didn’t exactly know what was going on. We got Tony back on the raft and continued on. On each rapid, 1 of the 3 rafts would take turns going first, so we could all watch each other. We were blessed with a beautiful day, and I was so up for round 2- but we ended at 1pm, had lunch, and then set out to find some natural hot springs.

After driving for a while, grabbing some ice cream, and singing to a bunch of songs that reminded me of high school, we found this hot spring that was directly behind a big, scary commercial one. Mike found some mud- and we all had ourselves a good old spa mud treatment. After some awesome picture-taking and rinsing off the mud, Vaness and I found ourselves on the bus headed back to Auckland, while the other group headed back in the car. It was all fine and dandy, except we stopped to get food at one of our stops, and Burger Kind was not “fast” food. It was very, very slow… and they had the nerve to ask if we wanted to take a customer survey. We declined and headed back to the bus… the moving bus… and I have never seen Vaness run so fast in my life. We stopped the bus and jumped on- very very last minute save. Before we knew it, we were home sweet home!