Road Trip

Parks are essential with road trips

When Jim Hickey says there’s flash flooding in a certain part of the country most people would steer clear. But we headed straight for it.
I’d only decided to take the kids on a road trip the day before and, after booking in with friends down the line, spent the following day packing. First stop – Waihi. This was the worst-hit but, by the time I learned this my friend had already got out a roast for dinner. This caused Master Seven, who, strangely doesn’t like meat or potatoes, to fret the night before. I found him lying in bed whimpering.
“I think I might have to stay home from our road trip,” he declared.
Road trips are a lot easier than the days of yore. We no longer need to fill the car with portacots which need assembling and dismantling at each end, double strollers and then the finer, but equally important details such as dummies, bottles, pamol, teddies and special blankies. Now it’s simply a matter of packing our clothes and food and driving.
Having said that, it still took a whole day to pack.
The last time I took a roadie on my own I had two dvd screens attached to the backs of the front seats. These were fantastic and held the kids enthralled the whole ten-hour round trip. However, I didn’t have the novelty this time and, instead relied on the ipad. Between Master Seven’s Angry Bird blasting out from that, Miss Four reading aloud to herself, Master Four’s computer games and my ipod music, we sounded like a spacey parlour.
But, this didn’t last long. In typical childlike fashion, the “Are we there yets?” began before we even reached Waipu. I didn’t have the heart to tell them we still had another three and a half hours to go – make that four and a half by the time you take into account a stop-off and then missing the Paeroa turn-off (don’t ask).
So by the time we made it to Waihi the water levels had receded till there was no evidence of flooding. At our first destination, the kids soon reacquainted themselves and before long the house was filled with the sound of stomping feet and uproarious laughter, much to the dad’s horror upon his return from work.
The next day I decided to head to my brother’s in Hamilton. My old stomping ground in uni days, I hadn’t returned to the city for nearly 15 years and realised I didn’t know where a single park was. Somehow parks didn’t feature all those years ago. But we found a lovely one by the lake and waited for the kids’ uncle to finish work so we could follow him home to his place in the country.
As we pulled up, Miss Four noticed a horse float in the drive and I explained what it was for. The following morning the first thing she said was “What is a horse ‘flute’ for again?” I, once again, explained in simplified terms that it was for transporting horses from one place to another. It’s hard to imagine what she conjured up in her head from that as, just before we left, she produced a drawing of a horse and its rider holding up a long object lined with circles.
“What’s that?” I questioned.
“That’s the horse flute,” she emphasized.
I wrote a brief explanation for my brother and his flatties, who had left for work, and pinned it to the fridge. We set off on the next leg of our roadie to the Mount, where we were to meet and stay with my old uni friends and their families. This was supposed to only take an hour but took two due to missing the turn off. Once again, don’t ask.

After driving through Paeroa three times
on our roadie, it had to be done.