There’s a certain eerily-accurate horoscope that I read each day.

All last week it used song references by The Beatles as a comparison for what was going on in my life.

And each morning that I drove to or from work, a Beatles song would come on, just like John was trying to speak to me from beyond the grave.

Except Friday. I carpooled on Friday and that driver didn’t listen to music when he drove, because he was a freak.

But then I left work at lunch time to catch a road trip ride with New Guy (it was for a departmental team building exercise) and it turns out that his i-pod was stacked with Beatles songs, which we spent the next three and a half hours screaming our throats away too.

We had another co-worker in the back. He’s a research nerd who spends his days playing with “giant lasers”.

I think we scared him, with the way we had way too much energy and knew every word to every song and didn’t shut the fuck up the whole trip.

It sort of reminded me of that bit in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, where they’re headed across the desert and they pick up the hitchhiker and manage to scare the fuck out of him.

We were headed for Rotovegas.

We didn’t have drugs, although after a very late lunch stop, we loaded up on sugar-laced lollies, and if Giant Laser Boy thought we were wired before, boy was he in for a treat…

The car unexpectedly veered across the road as New Guy homophobically freaked out in a “Oh My God, I can’t believe you just did that!” kind of way to my attempt to jokingly do something Totally Gay and try and feed him a lolly while he was driving.

Eek.

We went down for a team-building exercise. But our team has become so dysfunctional lately that all the free food and booze couldn’t manage to shake that funk. Fuck it.

I was going to turn in before midnight. Then someone said they were going to get some Tequila slammers. Then I said I would not drink any as I hated Tequila. Then someone went and got Tequila slammers. Then I was already drunk enough that I thought fuck it and drank one. Then I immediately turned green.
Then I left the bar. Then I was sick for an entire 100m stretch of the main street of Rotorua.

The vomit was red. Or perhaps that was blood. I don’t remember eating or drinking any red. So it was probably blood.

So I went to another bar. Watched a cool live band. But was still somehow in bed before midnight. Lame.

We headed back the next morning after leaving the geothermal city that smells like farts.

We stopped along the way for gas.
New Guy let some retard kid check his oil and top it up.
Then I took over driving.

We were having fun driving back through the cow-fucking student city of Hamilton, driving slowly with the windows down and yelling out to pedestrians “HELLO THERE. WE’RE FROM AUCKLAND. DO YOU KNOW WHAT A CAPPACINO IS YET?” and “THAT WOMAN THERE THAT YOU’RE KISSING – IS THAT YOUR SISTER?” and “YOU. YES YOU THERE. WE’RE FROM AUCKLAND. WE HAVE ALL OUR OWN TEETH. ARE YOU JEALOUS?”

Then we had to pull over suddenly.
ME: “What’s that smell? Like… something’s burning.”
New Guy: “It’s not our car. It must be someone else”.
Giant Laser Boy: “Ummm … why is there smoke coming out of the bonnet.”
All: “Shit!”

I thought the car had caught on fire. But it turns out that Retard Kid had forgotten to put the oil cap back on when during our service station stop 40 minutes earlier. There was oil and smoke everywhere. Fortunately the cap was still sitting on top of the engine. And there was just enough oil left to get us home.

But Hamilton wouldn’t let us go just yet.

We hit some major roadworks just before the city limits. It took aaaagges to get through. Then we somehow took a wrong turn. It took us 10 minutes before we realised we’d taken a wrong turn. Then we had to turn around. Then it took aaaaggges to get back through the road works and onwards to freedom.

“Fuck you Hamilton, we’re out of here!”

And we never went back there ever again.