My first big kid job

Sorry for the delay all,
So far I am loving my locum position at Massey Farm Services. It is 90% dairy but as Jared already alluded there are the occasional surprises.

This is "Goatee" in his sweater...right before I put a ring around his balls

 The dairy industry is quite different here than the North American system. Yesterday I treated an 11 year old dairy cow for Mg grass staggers, not something my friends back home would be doing much of. Here are some pictures of a milking shed.

It is all out in the open, this particular one is a swing over herringbone. K, enough nerdy dairy talk. The clients here are all so nice and laid back, not too much gets them worked up! I love that I get to cruise around all day checking out the countryside and the scenery, talking to farmers.

A couple of days ago I went through the Manawatu Gorge, which had been closed since October 2011 because there were a bunch of mud-slides (they call them slips!) which took out portions of the road.

The Manawatu River running through the Manawatu Gorge

One of the multiple "slips" that made the Gorge unpassable for almost a year

Until next time, thanks for reading all the way to the end and hope things are going well on your end!

Search for the Elusive Hippie Van

On Monday (August 27), I decided that if I was going to find a vehicle for us, I would have to go to Auckland and leave my sugar momma Roberta back in Palmerston North to work. I had spent many hours searching on Trademe (a site much like our autotrader) and there seemed to be the most selection around Auckland which is around 500 kms away. I looked at the jetstar website and got a flight from Wellington to Auckland for only $35! I then got a $15 bus ticket from Palmerston to Wellington which is around 150 kms to the south. I got into Auckland at 11:30 that night and grabbed a shuttle to my hostel. I was booked in for a 8 person shared room (because its the cheapest) and it was really fun using the light on my telephone to try and find the only bed without a person in it. Not. But surprise surprise it was a top bunk right beside the door that I seemed to miss right off the bat.

 

 

I woke next morning and started calling people to view some vans. Two of the ones I was the most interested in had been sold the day before. Just my luck. Auckland is a city with 1.5 million people and these vans were located in all different parts of the city. The first guy was nice enough to come pick me up and take me to the van he was selling. There was a few more vans to look at in that particular area. I looked the cans over and took a few for test drives. There was a few interesting moments while test driving, since I'm not used to this whole driving on the wrong side of the road. These included almost turning right in front of someone and putting on the window wipers almost every time I wanted to use the turning signal. And then there was those damn round abouts where no one really knows what is going on. Although it wasn't smooth, I made it through the day without damaging anything. I probably walked 15 kms and travelled on many city buses for over 50 kms in the day. By 9 p.m. I was ready to hit the sack.

Wednesday morning I got up feeling a bit refreshed. The owner of the hostel told me to check out the backpacker's carworld to see what they had. Its just basically a place where people who want to sell there vehicle can park it. I took a look at a few but none were really intriguing me that much. They did offer me a lot of good advice on buying vehicles though. I decided that afternoon to buy the first one I had seen the day before and made an arrangement to him to pick me up on Thursday morning. I hit up an Irish pub that night and listened to some good live music.

Thursday morning Robert picked me up from the hostel and drove me out to the van. He drove me all around to get insurance, an AA membership, and to get RUCs. In New Zealand, diesel is like 65 cents cheaper than gas so they made up a road user charge (RUC). You pay like $50 for per 1000 kms. If you get caught without having paid for them, the fine is 3x the amount of kms you are over. Just so you know gas is $2.22/litre and diesel is like $1.60/litre! And we thought the prices were high in Canada!

Finally Roberta and I were the proud new owners of a 1992 diesel Toyota Lucida. Take a look at this beauty.

 

 

 

As you can see, it has all the back seats removed a has a bed in it. It came with a bunch of camping equipement as well.

After the purchase I made my back to Palmerston North 500 kms away. It didn't take too long to get the hang of driving on the left but it still feels ackward. I seen a lot of cool country on the way down and found some places where we need to take our time to explore later in our trip.

Lake Taupo

 

Mount Rupehu covered by clouds

 

 

 

I made it back to Palmerston North in one piece. When I got back everyone was sitting at the table drinking champagne so I joined in. Alex had just found out after 13 years of schooling she had passed her human pathology exam. That makes vet school sound like a breeze.
Over and out.

Life in a New Land

So I have become quite behind in this little blogging project that I have started so I'm going to catch up with everything that has happened in the last two weeks. Since I am unemployed at the moment, I have all day.

The morning after we arrived, Roberta and I got up and grabbed a bus to check out Massey University where she has a 4 week locum position with Farm Services. Her goal was to be as much like Fritz Schumann as she possibly could. I think she was a little freaked out to be teaching final year vet students but she has come to really enjoy it now. Since it was Friday, she didn't have to come back til Monday leaving us some time to get our lives a little organised.

On Saturday, after two nights sleeping in the bed and breakfast, we realised that it wasn't really some place that we wanted to stay for any length of time. We went and checked out a place that Roberta had found on the internet a few weeks before we came. It turned out to be more of what we were looking for. When we informed the elderly man that we were moving to a different place he didn't really take it that well. "This always happens. People get here and then decide to move." Well I'm not a detective but maybe that's telling you something. He then told us we had to pay for an extra night since it was around noon to which Roberta replied, "Well maybe you can think of not doing that." "Why not?!," he asks. "Just as a nice thing to do." This was certainly a different approach than I was thinking of taking. Looking a little shocked he said, "Well maybe I won't. I hope you negotiated a good salary at your job because you are good at it!" and then he walked away. Note to self just be nice to people that are being difficult, it will catch them off guard. We moved to the new place which was conveniently just down the street. For only a little extra money this place is much nicer and it includes all meals! They actually cook for us and make Roberta's lunch for her. Most of our roommates are students in programs that require a lot of studying like aviation, vet, and there is also a human pathologist finishing her final exam after 13 years of school. They are all great people and easy to get along with.

On Sunday we decided to explore some of the area. We took a walk through Palmerston North and down by the Manawatu River.

 

 

 

On Monday, Roberta left early in the morning for her first day of work. I went there in the afternoon to see how things were going. She said good and took me to see her first ever patient being Dr. Templeton. As I looked over the small pen we both started to laugh at what was on the other side. Her name was Suzy and she was a squealing little pot-bellied pig! She was perfectly healthy just needing a ring in her nose. I'm still mad I didn't have my camera with me.

 

Ill let Roberta blog about what has happened at work. She has been mainly dealing with dairy cows and has been enjoying it this far. While she was at work, I was busy looking on the internet for our next jobs and for a vehicle. I had a interview on the Thursday but it wasn't what I was looking for so I turned down the offer.

 

On Saturday (August 25th) we got a call from Mike and Pip. Mike had been to Canada back in the day and had stayed with Byron (Roberta's dad) on the farm. Jocelyn (Roberta's sister) had also stayed with them for a few months when she was here a couple years ago. They were in Palmerston and invited us out to their farm for the weekend. Their farm is located east of Masterton not far from the east coast. On the way there we stopped at the Pukaha National Wildlife center. They have a lot of the indigenous birds of New Zealand along with many reptiles. It was a cool walk through the forest.

 

 

 

 

Roberta was quite excited to see her first silver fern.

 

 



 

The next picture is of a kiwi bird. They are nocturnal (only out at night) so they are housed in a dark building so people can observe them while they aren't sleeping.

For the size of the bird their eggs are huge!

 

After this we carried on to there farm that consists of around 80 cows and 1300 ewes. They have all kinds of fruit trees in their yard much to the delight of Roberta. She looked like the cookie monster eating grapefruit and oranges one after the other.

 

 

That night we watched the All Blacks (the national rugby team) dominate the Wallabies (Australian team). Mike helped me out with the rules. Rugby is to New Zealand as hockey is to Canada. They are nuts about it.

 

The next morning Mike took us out on the quad to feed the cows and check on all the sheep. It was quite a scenic cruise through the paddocks. The sheep are just starting to lamb so there are a few cute little furballs running around which Roberta was loving. We even helped Mike out with some vet work as one of his ewes had a prolapse.

Pictures never seem to do any justice. The views were amazing.

After this they took us out to Castle Point which was right on the coast. It was another place with great views.

 

 

Well I think that is long enough for this post. Im gonna go have some lunch and catch up on the rest of the things that have happened after. Over and out.

 

 



The Start of our Journey

So first time we have attempted this whole blogging thing so you will have to bear with us.

Our journey started bright and early on August 14th at the Calgary airport. Our first flight was to Seattle home of the first Starbucks. Even though she didn't tell me, I know roberta was hoping to run into McSteamy or McDreamy but no such luck for her. After this brief stopover we headed onto Los Angeles home of the Stanley Cup winning Kings. We had a 12hour layover here and were quite happy to find out that we were able to leave the airport to explore this concrete jungle. After talking with some of the locals we decided to go hit up Santa Monica beach.

 

Our luggage had been sent straight through to New Zealand but we both had some shorts with us so we spent most of the day just relaxing on the beach. We were unable to locate any celebs as we spied at the people walking past under the cover of our shiny lenses. (well made that sound a little creepy!) 

 

 

After a few naps on the beach and when we were ready to go exploring some more we headed north up the beach walkway towards Venice Beach aka Muscle Beach. There was definitely a few more characters down this way which added to the entertainment as well as some interesting shops. being young and not having very many wrinkles we did not have to hit up this place:

 



but it was quite convenient for those who were needing it.

 

After watching the sun go down on this cool beach we decided that it was time to head back to LAX to hop on the overnight plane to Nadi, Fiji. It was quite a huge plane that we boarded with an upstairs and was filled right up. We were lucky enough to both get middle seats which allowed for a really good sleep. Not. In a sleepy haze, Roberta flipped up her table which knocked over her cup full of wine. Good thing it was white. There was quite an unhappy lady sitting in front of us that was wearing an angry birds t-shirt. Roberta and I concluded that she would have been much happier if she had been wearing her Care Bear shirt.

 

Ten hours later we arrived in Nadi, Fiji and three hours after that we headed to Auckland, New Zealand. Our bags all arrived safely except for our brand new sleeping bags that were strapped to the outside. Note to self don't strap anything to the outside of your bags. We talked to baggage claims who said it happened quite often and there was nothing they could do because they were not labelled. that's when I replied "So do you guys have a bunch of sleeping bags in the back then?" The guy disappeared for a few moments and then returned with two newer sleeping bags and said here you go. Some people may think that this is gross but hey we are cheap and all they needed was a wash.

 

The last wait of six hours of waiting to board a plane to Palmerston North (where Roberta has a lucom position at the vet school) seemed like a lifetime as we were tired and were in need of a shower.

 

Finally 42 hours after we started this journey we were at our destination. It was 8:30 at night on August 16th so we promptly showered and hit the sac.