Jessie Casson

The skies are grey, all things are slightly damp and both Matt and me had our first ‘I want to feel clean and dry’ moment today.  It had been raining for 2 days now on and off.  However this moment was not indicative of how the trip is progressing.  We had a great week and Christmas at Waipartiki beach.  Swam, fished, relaxed and drank a drop or two.

 So far we have two winners, both farmers and wonderfully kind and gentle men.  Spending time in this vast countryside reminds me of my childhood in the North of England’s rural glades.

Between Taupo and Napier we ran out of fuel. Well, we didn’t let the tank boil dry but we realised that our kms were almost up and stopped to steal, beg or borrow some fuel.  As luck wold have it there was a big diesel camper-van in the car-park.  Jason (a fellow traveler), having  grown up in the back end of Manchester was very familiar with the ciphering technique.  Soon the camper owner was $30 richer and we had enough fuel to be on our way.  We vowed to purchase a map, which had been forgotten from the outset.  Speaking to the service station owner the following day, he informed me that the council had made them take down their sign warning of long distances between petrol stations because it was putting the break down service out of business.

We are off! Goodbye comfy bed, goodbye daily showers, goodbye convention, hello adventure. The blue skies and sun that I had always existed in my leaving town imaginings isn’t in place but there has been no rain for the last 2 hours so things might brighten up. I think we will be more acutely aware of the weather living in such confinement. The caravan is bulging at the seams with stuff we think we need. I have whittled down my clothes 5 times since my first edit. We have bikinis and gloves, as we will run into all temperatures. Hopefully more of the bikini kind though.

And now I am just sitting here unable to put into words the excitement and uncertainty that the unknown holds.

I got some great news last week, Random House Publishing have agreed to publish the “Winners” project. I woke my Dad up at midnight, in England, to tell him and then sat and smiled for a while. In fact I am still smiling, although at times I feel the magnitude of the mission ahead. We leave in two weeks. The caravan arrived back from the spray painters today with a fresh coat and a 1970’s orange stripe around its middle, it looks like its just stepped out of a very funky show room.

Two weeks ago I bought a semi-pro video camera to document the trip. I have had two lessons from the lovely Alan who is patiently showing me the ropes, but I am still firmly in the all-the-gear-no-idea camp. Moving pictures unfortunately do not translate perfectly from stills, in fact there seems to be few rules of thumb that apply to both. But I am on a learning curve that is almost perpendicular.