The last few days have really been stressful in terms of transport issues. As Matt mentioned on the way to my grandfather's memorial our family car broke down and was diagnosed with a fairly major condition. Then when I got to the memorial late I was loaned my grandfather's car which I then had to navigate off Waiheke Island in the via car-ferry and then find my way home, in the dark, from a part of Auckland I rarely drive in with no map.

Well this morning Sherry frantically texted me at 8.15am asking me to phone her urgently. She was on the train to Uni and had then discovered her train ticket and her wallet were not with her and the train people were going to throw her off the train in Mt Albert (a long distance from both home and Uni). To make matters worse she had an important Biology test at 9 am. The train people would not take my credit card and were basically hardline - produce cash or a ticket or get off the train (fair enough but it still sucked).

As anyone who drives in Auckland knows getting from Henderson to Mt Albert train station and then to Uni by 9am when you are not leaving til 8.15am is seriously pushing it. Worse I was in my pyjamas, so were the other kids and Christian needed to be at school accross the other side of Henderson (equally thick and nasty traffic) by 8.40am. Somehow I got him to school and Sherry to her test only 5 minutes later (with her wallet which I'd found on the floor where she'd been studying last night) and I was about to go "phew" and relax but then I noticed that my grandfather's car was overheating!

ARGH!

About another hour of mucking around with locating water and phoning my dad we (me and the younger two homeschooled kids) were finally on our way home. Though unfortunatly my grandfather's car looks to have an equally serious mechanical problem as our family car.

Give me the days when you could travel by horseback.

UPDATE

Poor Sherry. After getting to her test late this morning and having a long day at Uni she has just texted me to say that the train taking her home has broken down and she has been taken off the train and taken to Newmarket - well off the path between Uni and Henderson - and has no idea how she is going to get home. I just phoned Maxx the transport company and asked how they intended to get her home and first they told me that that train was now fixed and no one had been put on busses (why is she texting me saying all the passengers had been taken off the train and were on a bus then?) and then they said, "well doesn't she have any other money?" I pointed out that she had handed them her train ticket, they'd accepted it and as such they then had an obligation to get her home and to not leave her in Newmarket. Silly me, I thought giving her a train ticket for transport would be sufficient. I got put through to someone else who said she didn't think they would dump the passengers in Newmarket and then she put me through to someone else who she promised me would know but the someone else turned out to be an answerphone that promptly hung up on me. Hopefully sanity and customer service will prevail and they will get her home...