Meeting the Family

New Zealand!  This country had always seemed like this distant destination that I may have been lucky enough to visit one day in the far future.  But here I am now!  Living in Sydney, we were just too close to not visit Rod's home country.

We arrived in Auckland early in the morning, picked up our Ace rental car and drove north to Stanmore Bay.  Apparently, Aucklanders consider Stanmore Bay to be different from Auckland, but if you're from anywhere else, it's basically Auckland.  

A quick note about our rental car.  We're actually in New Zealand promoting the newly launched ridesharing website, Jayride (http://www.jayride.co.nz).  The rental car came from Ace rentals, the Jayride Challenge's main sponsor, but since the whole Challenge included saving carbon footprints by ridesharing, Ace wanted to provide us with their tricked out, enviro-friendly, heavily branded car.  This meant we were given a manual car.  Neither of us can drive stick.

Luckily, Chris was able to give us a short lesson before we dropped him off at his folk's place.  Needless to say, the Auckland area is a hilly place and the amount of bunny hopping we accomplished that morning managed to shatter a bottle of tequila in the trunk!  So much for saving money on duty free.

So there we were, stalling the car as we pulled into the driveway of Rod's parents' home.  Sleepy, disoriented, and dishevelled, this was how I met Rod's parents.  Not my most glorious first impression, but at least they were welcoming and understanding of our funny situation.