Terrigal Road Trip - Day 1

*warning: long post + many pics ahead!!*

The night before...
Knowing me, I'm one hell of a lazy person and hence a very last-minute kind of person. Unsurprisingly, I only started packing for the road trip on the night before at 11pm. Not that I actually pack a lot, just that it takes me ages to decide what to take and what not to take. So after packing most things and writing up a page-long list checklist of things yet to be packed, I finally went to sleep.. only to get up a few hours later.

The Day...
Woke up and continued packing everything all the way up till 11am when Kevin came to pick Ky and I up to go over to Steve's place. I was in such a rush that I almost forgot to write a birthday message to Dac in the journal for her!! So I quickly sat down and started wrting away while chomping on a banana and some OJ. After filling up Kev's tiny boot up with all our bags (+ his) we were off to Steve's!

Just after I gave Dac her birthday present. Mashimaro eyes! HA!

The meetup at Steve's...
We got to Steve's a little past 11 and hurrah for us because WE WERE THE EARLY BUNCH! Only KC, Chris, Grace, Andy, Mikel, Bel and Viv were there when we got there. Ok so half of them were already there when we got there but still....! ^.^ After munching on some rockmelon that Steve's darling mum cut up for us, mucking around on the piano and taking a few random pics here and there, the others finally arrived! Yippy!!

Gotta love our weird smiles!

Maestro!

The luggage...
Ever played tetris in reality? That's what it was like for us. 14 people, 3 cars and a shitload of luggage. Gosh, even now I can't believe we fit all that luggage + alcohol + some pans into the 3 cars. I sure didn't envy the guys who had to pack everything in the car boots!

Waiting around for luggage tetris... and Andy's got a bun in the oven!

The dilema...
There were bushfires somewhere just north of Sydney the weekend before we were heading off to Terrigal so the F3 and the Pacific Hwy were both closed off. Leaving the only detour of going via Wisemans Ferry to go to the central coast. Seeing as Australia Day was at the end of the week and most people take this whole week off to go away with friends and family, we didn't want to go via the ferry because we knew it'd take longer to get there. We just didn't know how much longer...

Decisions...Decisions... *sigh*

Fob to the max baby!

The departure...

After hanging around Steve's place for ages and then at a petrol station, we went to Stratty station to pick up Cham, Jono and PF's luggage (or whatever we could still fit). Poor boys.. by they they'd already been waiting for us for a few hours! Everyone grabbed a quick lunch and decided to just go via Wisemans because we'd already got everybody and all the luggage together.. not to mention we'd already booked the apartment too. So everyone piled in the cars and then we were off!

The boys waiting for us at Stratty station.

The seating arrangement...
Steve's car - Steve, Cathy, Casey, Viv and Chris
Billy's car - Billy, Bel, Dac and Mike
Kev's car - Kev, Ky, Andy, Grace and me

Billy's car's occupants.

The que...
So there we were driving all the way to Wisemans Ferry and I looked on in amusement as we moved further and further away from civilization. I never knew Dural was full of farms! (Sorry Simon! XD) Anyways when we were about 2kms from Wisemans Ferry we hit the end of a que. One that seemed endless. We started getting out of the car to wait for the que to move and actually had fun for the first say... 5 times we did that. After that, it wasn't so fun...

The que;our view for many,many,many hours.

The never-ending cycle...
Get in car.
Start car.
Move car forward 10m.
Stop.
Turn off ignition.
Get out of car.
Walk/wait around for 15-30 mins.
Repeat until ferry is reached.

The drivers + the 3 of us who stayed with the cars.

The disbelief...
That's what we did for... wait for it.... SEVEN FREAKING HOURS!!! It was around 2ish when we started queing and only got on the ferry at 9PM! Faarrrr.... the amusement of it all wore off after the first 2 hours and we were left to figure out how to entertain each other for the next 5 hours. Hell, we didn't even know it'd take 7 HOURS to travel 2km!!

Us in the rear view mirror. I love the b/g in this pic!

The entertainment...
Talking about random stuff.
Laughing about random stuff.
Taking random photos of everything (we got quite a few pics in those 7 hours).
Eating random junk food.
Sleeping a little at random intervals.
Listening to random songs on Casey's ipod/i-somethingthatconnectstheipodtocarradios.
Posing like random models for photos.

Viv's pig getting violated. Poor piggy...

Yes, we were quite random. Then again, what do you expect when you leave a small group of people together for so many hours with nothing but cars and mother nature around you?

Gosh we look bored...

The Ferry...
Indeed, the ferry was so major that I had to give 'ferry' a capital F. I can't believe we waited 7 HOURS for a ride that only lasted for 1 min! Hell, by then it was so dark the others couldn't even tell that they were moving! I could only tell because I stuck my head and camera out the window to take pics because we were THAT glad to be on the ferry. Only thing left to do was to continue the rest of the way to Terrigal!

We waited 7 hours to see this sign. Unbelieveable!

The fires...
When we were on the other side of the river we didn't actually see the raging fires but we did see the line they started backburning from. In Kev's car we had the air-con on and we could STILL smell the smoke... I feel sorry for those in Billy's car since they hadta keep their windows open (Billy's AC was broken)!! We also drove past parts where there were little fires on the side of the road and damn was that scary. It was close to some residential properties too!

*damn it, no pic of the fires!*

No fire but totoro's here instead!

The dinner...
Since most of us hadn't eaten anything substantial since lunch we stopped off at the caltex at Gosford for dinner. Mine consisted of a steak and mushroom pie and a bottle of passiona. Damn it felt good to have some proper hot food in my tummy after so many hours without proper food! Haha, when the 14 of us were sitting outside of caltex 2 cops and a few firefighters stopped by the service station too. And damn did we look out of place... 14 asians all sitting/standing outside of Gosford caltex eating dinner at 11pm!

*damn it.. no pic of us outside caltex either!*

Piggy's driving!

The arrival...
Another 15 min drive and we were in the heart of Terrigal, finally! A bunch of us got dropped off at the beach while 6 of the others went to check in since we said there was only going to be 8 people staying at the apartment. As soon as I stepped out of the car, aside from the pins and needles I felt in my arms and legs, I could smell the sea!!

Andy and me. Booyah for freakishly big eyes!

So when the others drove off to check in Viv, Bel, Dac, Billy, Grace, Mikel and I went to the beach to jump around in the sand and what else.. to take pics! After mucking around in the sand we walked once down the main road and back then we FINALLY made our way to the apartment. By then it was past midnight!

Merch Angels + their pimp!

Since we basically took the whole day to get to Terrigal, the apartment's management didn't charge us for the first night. Booyah! That was an extra $500 for us to spend!! Also, since we got there so late we asked Cham, Jono and PF to train it up the next morning and we'd get someone to go pick them up from Gosford station. Sorry guys!

Wish you could've come too Dan!

P.S. I actually typed up half of this post a few nights ago but stupid mozilla froze and I lost the damn post. *sigh* Why can't blogger be like microsoft word?!?!?!