Teenage Toilet & Food Stops

Well it seems that I am making up for lost time with my blogging but there is so much to say.....

It goes like this....

Saturday was the day for the driving favour that I had been talked into, the drive to Raurimu (for those who don't know this is up by Mount Ruapehu. The Salvation Army's Blue Mountain Adventure Camp is located here. a 4 - 5 hour drive from Wellington)

Picture this:- me driving a 12 seater van loaded with 10 teenagers (aged 14 - 16) and 1 21 year old, we start travelling at 8:30am ish on a Saturday morning. The first conversation I hear from the back of the van 20 minutes into the trip ends with a young lady saying that the thing that she misses is the fact that she is normally asleep at this time of the day..... I wish.....

Because I am not totally sure of the turnoffs that we need to take at the end of our journey I am following Katherine all the way to our destination.... The van I am driving is a gutless wonder and 3rd gear is required for getting the revs up enough to overtake or go up steep hills.

We are trucking along quite nicely with my co-pilot (Cameron) systematically changing the radio stations on the radio as we lose reception of one he finds another... Totally skipping the stations that I would preferred to listen to (I did begin to feel like I was a bit of a music Nana/snob) and tuning into a talk-back type program at one point as there was nothing else to find, or very much up to the minute music stations complete with mind numbing rap stuff. (or am I just getting too old and totally out of touch... just remember I have 10 years old before you answer that).

Anyhoo back to the trucking along when the car I am following take the sudden move of pulling over in Levin as a couple of people in her car desperately needed a toilet stop...... Stupid place to stop really, outside McDonalds so not only does this turn into a toilet stop that takes forever but it also becomes a breakfast stop, almost fastfood style but it takes quite a while as there are about 6-7 individuals from our collective cars getting food at 9:30 am on a Saturday morning (and a some of them wanted cheeseburgers which are not avaliable at that time). We finally get going realising just before we leave that we had arranged with the other cars also going that we would meet at the Mobil station at Bulls (only another 40 or so minutes away from where we are) before continuing... Oh No another McDonalds........ So this turned into another long toilet and food stop... I must admit these kids (most of them in my van girls) can certainly put away a lot of food.

Next stop (or so I thought) Raurimu... I wanted to offload this lot as soon as possible and head back because just remember I had to make the return journey too. And these teenagers are getting noisier and noiser and they are just itching to get up to mischief. At one point one guy in the back asked me if he could do something and to this minute I still have not worked out the term he used. I nearly said yes but decided that maybe that it might not be a good idea so I suggested that he wait until we got to Bulls and the rest of us were out of the van. He responded that it needed to be done while the van was moving and again I almost said yes.... Thank God I didn't. I learned a few minutes later from my co-pilot that the young man was planning to moon passing cars.... An experience that I feel we and the other cars could well do without.

Towards the end of the trip just when I thought we were doing well, we only had 40 minutes or so to go and we were beating the 2 other cars that we heading to Raurimu with us the cry came for another toilet stop..... What was this !!!! 3 toilet stops for teenagers in a 4 and a half hour car ride...... That is worse than my own children..... one who is nearly 3 (she is toilet trained by the way, no nappies for this kid) and two 10 year olds..... I know that our bladders get weaker as we get older but that is ridiculous.

The only other thing to report was the slight panic I felt when Katherine decided without too much warning to overtake and with the gutless wonder full of teenagers there was no way I was going to make too.... I must say the gutless did get quite a bit more grunty when I had offloaded the teenagers......

Although the trip back was quite a bit quicker and very very quiet ... It was almost too quiet and it was just a little bit lonely .... So much so that I almost picked up a hitchhiker or too to break the boredom but I could only find male ones so my better judgement prevailed and I left them where they were and just enjoyed the quiet time and used the solitude to talk to God and to find a radio station much more to my liking......