Well as promised Vicky delivered on the t-shirt. And I must say it is rather dashing. I'll try and work out images but it's red with what appears to be a blatant steal of the NZ air force logo. Which does indeed look awesome.

She also included a free jump off the Auckland harbor bridge, which lasts a year - thankfully as I don't think I could muster the stones to go just before my flight.

The gifts really are the icing on the cake for tonight being the All Black series win. I'll hold my breath for the world cup though. Those boys can really break a mans heart.

As for trip planning goes I haven't hit any snags. Manik will pick me up from the airport, we'll see a baseball game that night. I then have Saturday and Sunday to do whatever kids do these days, then an early morning ride to the train (7am departure) which after a brisk 36 hours land me in Denver, Colorado.

Luckily at this point Elisa by either grace of my early warning or gods of trip planning have given her about a week off which coincides with my arrival. Sounds like she has a lot planned so I guess I'll just try and hang on as I adjust to high altitude.

Next will be my Chicago leg of he tour, which will have Andrew, Alli and perhaps Travis. I'll then take the train from there to Altoona, PA and then bus up to University Park to do my paper work.

After all that is done, I try and get to Upstate New York and spending a week or so with Aliza and Ben, then head back down to Philadelphia, catch up with Dave and if I'm lucky, bum a ride to University Park.

It all seems like just a series of connect the dots and if my lazy planning pays off then I hope all goes well with no down time between stops.

I just returned from Auckland and somehow my visa bet me home, not by much, the postie was only a few doors down, so maybe a mere 40 seconds. I guess that is a good reflection of our postal service, being that I live far out etc.

They stapled an envelope to my passport I'm not allowed to open, it really has me curious, but alas I can see no good in me opening it.

This was the first time I had driven to Auckland and I left with no definate place to stay or any idea how to get around, but surprisingly everything went rather well. I actually got more lost in Hamilton thanks to a bung shortcut, but all is well I got there in the end.

I crashed at Daves and he dropped me close to where I had to be in the morning so my first stop was the IEP (no idea what is stands for) and dropped off Vicky's camera. A happy ending for Vicky, the people there were nice and gave me one of their maps of the city, which had post offices on it, which was fortunate as I needed a courier bag before I went to the consulate. One walk to the far end of Shortland street and that was no longer a problem.

I saw no hosptital, I feel so lied to by the show.

The consulate was pretty awesome, opening the lift doors and seeing two American flags on some sort of third reich styled flag poles was pretty official looking (I guess it's because they both have the eagle as the bird) the whole process was over pretty quick if you exclude the waiting around for my scheduled appointment time. Being in there really dawned on me how big a semester this is going to be. I was expecting this feeling much, much earlier.

Now that I'm home I see I've pissed off Bindy enough to get an abusive message over facebook by not changing my tenancy details. I thought the only person really affected would be me by delaying my own bond, so if anyone from my flat reads this and is getting 'screwed' by my delay in action, I'll try and get onto it todayish. As soon as I work out whatever it is I'm actually meant to do.

Oh yeah, having a CD you can't eject playing the same Crowded House does get old after roughly the 4th hour. I think I heard 'Weather With You' about 9 times, yet amazingly could not remember all the lyrics.

I did a large tour on a kayak today and got to see parts of the lake that I'd never seen before on the boat. Being a large journey I'm now absolutely shagged and recovering in bed. I guess it's pretty cool how in the middle of winter I can kayak in gym shorts and a life jacket and not suffer hypothermia, despite being out for a few hours.

In other news I have my visa appointment on Tuesday, so I'll make sure I have all my papers done before hand and make my way up to either stay with Dad or Dave so I don't have to make an early mission. I've never driven round there before, I'm not really looking forward to navagating it by myself. I guess the plan would be to arrive early and be prepared to park somewhere for a few hours.

I also tracked down Vicky, and will get her camera to her work program place a few blocks from the American consulate hopefully. Making it one happy ending.

I'm also thinking of deciding against the 15 day Amtrak rail plan as I'm planning on just doing 3 legs of a journey, which would be cheaper to buy individually. If I can get a student advantage card that would make the savings even better. We're not talking great savings, but it is some saving and the ability for me to remain more flexible with my travels. If only I could get hold of the people I'm going to see.

Well the pilgrimage took a bit of a hit early on. The bad weather that I had to move in caused the ferry to be delayed. Leaving me to hold on to the van for a whole extra day. It was a whole Gilligan's Island scenario, it was only meant to be a few hours and it became an indefinite wait. The van people were really good about it and only charged me 6 hours, despite returning it Wednesday at around 10:30 in the morning.

I got my car loaded into Alex's truck and we drove up to Palmerston North, Feilding, then settled outside of Tokoroa. I really love riding in that thing, its like the observation deck for a road trip, you see so much more in a truck.

We ended up in Auckland the next night and later the next day I got my car out (mission and a half) and visited my Dad, which I hadn't done since I've been in Uni. Then I raced back to Te Puke to meet Alex with my stuff so I could chuck it in storage. Alex got held up by some lady who had a lot more stuff than she quoted on, so he had to hire extra labour, even with four people moving her stuff he was over 3 hours late, but that was fine, I had nowhere to be.

During my waiting session I was looking for stuff in my car to entertain myself and found a rather nice digital camera that wasn't mine. It was flat, but using my one to look at the memory card I established it was a girl we met in Wanaka and gave a ride to Queenstown to. I'm going to try and get it back to her as she was pretty cool and helped us when Riley hurt her ankle, she also tried to give us a place to stay. All I know is her name is Vicky, she is American and she works/ed at a bungee place in Queenstown.

I'm now in Rotoma, which is a lot further out then I remembered. But still, it's nice out here.