Lance’s Departure to New Zealand: It Ain’t Always Sunny in Auckland

Lance here.  
To recap my trip out to Oceania, I need to set the scene for our last few weeks in the States.  During our last night in Colorado we ventured up into the Rockies (took two pairs of gloves with me) for our friends’ wedding (shout out to Ryan and Kelly).  We had an amazing time staying with the Cengias (and everybody else) from our Colorado crew and enjoying the celebration of some of our good friends’ special day.  Not to mention Maggie took about 5 minutes of video of Clay on the dance floor; don’t know if it’s a secret crush, or she’s just in love with his moves.  After the wedding it was back to the party palace in the mountains where we kept the fun rolling with all of our friends until about 2 am (luckily James was fast asleep by that point).  Let me tell you, you look really cool partying with a baby monitor clipped to your belt.  After we said goodbye to everyone we knew it was time for our last shut-eye in CO for a couple of years.

Four a.m. James wakes up crying.  Maggie was conveniently too tired, so I got a bottle and fed him for about a half an hour.  Went back to bed and got a nice sleep till 6 a.m.  Maggie and I got up, prepped James for his long adventure, and headed East, watching the Rockies fade in our rear view mirror.

The drive back wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it could have been much worse.  We made it all the way to Illinois at the end of the first day, because of me pushing to keep going and continually ‘conning’ Maggie into just one more exit.  The next day we made it back to Michigan, and arrived at Big Tom and Momma Weber’s place (aka my parents).  We got there just in time to have a nice family meal and to take James out into the lake and give him his first experience in the water swimming.  Man is that kid cute.

Over the next week we were able to spend time with family and friends, and I was able to take in some of my favourite ‘last meals’.  I’ll tell you what, there’s just something about food in Detroit- it’s all amazing.  On Thursday I headed Up North to Harbor Springs to take part in one of the all-time great weekends.  I was finally getting to see some of my two best friends get married.  I was a groomsman in Dustin and KP’s wedding at Bay Harbor, and had a slicked out Tux to boot.  I had a great weekend spending time with all my loved ones from college and getting to see everyone before I left.  (I’m not mentioning one of the most incredible rounds of golf at Little Traverse Bay, which might be the most underrated course on earth, because let’s be honest, I played terribly).

After the wedding, I drove home to be back with family and spend that Sunday with my family, Maggie, James, Maggie’s parents and her little tag-along brother who drove up from Dayton to pick Maggie up on the way to PA to see their family.  Yeah, I’m talking to you, Ian.

All in all I had some incredible last days in the States, which made saying goodbye to pretty much my entire family that Monday that much more difficult.

The Flight

Most of you that know me know that I don’t have great luck.  It was once coined ‘The Luck of the Lance’ back in college.   I was dropped off at DTW by my parents and said goodbye to my crying mother, who tried once more to get me to stay, and immediately was met with a 1.5 hour line for baggage check.  Upon getting to the front I tried to check in my bags.  Mind you that since Maggie and I shipped our container out to NZ, these bags had to last me from Denver for the last week all the way through NZ for 5 weeks (or so I thought- it would later turn out to be about 8 weeks in NZ, so about 11 overall).  Anyway, my one bag was 2 pounds over and the lady made me repack, and then she made me switch one of my carry-ons for one that was checked.  This also caused a little problem with what I needed on the flight.  I finally was able to get past security and, as my flight was delayed 2 hours out of Detroit, I almost missed my flight out of Chicago.  Luckily that was delayed as well.  Except that delay meant that I almost missed my flight from LA to Auckland. They were calling my name over the loud speakers and I was the last one on the plane.  Just barely made it and not at all prepared for the next 14 hours.  This would be an ominous sign for the next month.

When I landed in Auckland I was put up at a hotel by PwC, but only had about 4 days to find a place to live, get a car, get a bank account, register with NZ, set up a phone, and try to get acquainted with the lifestyle out here as I was put onto our biggest client in the Auckland office and was shipped down to Hamilton for a month for work.

My sign about not being prepared was true to form as I didn’t realize NZ had a rainy season.  I’m not joking when I say that from the day I landed until about a month and a half later, there was all of 2 days where it didn’t rain.  A little different from Denver (the sunshine state (Wedding Crashers fans will get this reference)).  Starting out here was tough without Maggie and my little buddy James to be there with me, but that made the moment I picked them up from the airport that much sweeter.