At Mount Mellicks in Mount Maunganui (holy alliteration!), happy hour meant you ordered any beverage and got to spin the wheel full of awesome options like free drink, free bowl of fries, 20-50% off, and better luck next time. Kasey ordered a drink, we chanted “free, free, free!!” and it landed on FREE. We cheered like we won a million dollars. I ordered a coffee, we chanted “bowl of fries! Bowl of fries!” and it landed on BOWL OF FRIES. We cheered like we would never lose anything ever again. Brittany ordered a drink, we chanted “free” again and she got 30% off.
What a rush.
That night we stayed at Mount Backpackers Hostel downtown.
One sleeps as well as one would assume one would in a 16-bed
dorm room. 16 different people with different times of going to sleep, 16
(probably 32) different gadgets going off at different times in the night, and
16 different awakening times. If I do that math, I woke up 108 times in the
night.
I will say though, it was a whole lot of fun to meet about
25 people our age. We hung out on the back deck of the hostel and then went to
an Irish pub for karaoke. Kasey and Brittany shared a Boston connection with a
guy named Ben and he tried to convince me to sing. I said, “That’s one thing I
will never do.” I am completely tone deaf. He said, “You came all the day to
New Zealand to sit here and watch?” I nodded.
But then a couple hours after watching other people
completely bomb on their songs, Ben found “Wagon Wheel” and asked the three of
us to sing it with him. I felt like it’d make a better blog post if I actually
went up there.
I learned that the instrumentals in “Wagon Wheel” are 13
seconds and 26 seconds too long. But I did a little jig to pass the time. I
also learned that they called the ending an “outro”. I had never seen that
before. Other than that, no big aha moments, just glad I didn’t have the
microphone right up next to my mouth.
“Sweet Caroline” sang by a local around the age of 70 got
the crowd going like no one else could have. “So good, so good, so good!”
This is our new friend, Flo.
beth of fresh air 