Rugby World Cup Road Trip: Rugby on the road

Matt Johnson is on the road. Photo / Doug Sherring

Opinion

How better to gauge the nation's Rugby World Cup mood than put a man in a campervan and tell him to get lost?

For this entry, Matt Johnson checks in from the road.

This month, one of the only things separating rugby fans from 20 different countries is a median strip.

The open road is their bond. An actual road code can come later (as long as everyone remembers to keep left). Campervans, caravans, converted utes... cars packed with sleeping bags and cooking utensils. Flags flapping in the under-the-speed-limit wind. Here was your rag-tag band of footy fans looking for a little bit of luck, and maybe even a home. The Rugby World Cup equivalent of Battlestar Galactica.

No one had worked out who the Cylons were yet.

My brief? Pick up visiting rugby nutters. Get freaky with them discussing the application of new tackle-ball rules and the like. There was only one problem. They all had their own vehicles. It's hard to create a bit of stranger-danger when your target is cruising at 90 km/hr. While some followed their teams, others had set aside time for dedicated, non-rugby tourist activities. Many were headed to the South Island. They had heard there was just one person living there.

So instead, I picked up hitch-hikers. Neal, an arts student skipping school near Puhoi. Hoping to go to ELAM next year. And from there onto Berlin... where he had heard bombed-out buildings from the war were now being used as nightclubs.

Yuki, the Biology student who talked me through the 'soil profiles' of the banks outside Taupo that the motorway had been cut through. On her way back to Wellington after the ABs V Japan. And Wayne. Who was still wondering whether dinosaurs really were extinct... or perhaps just hiding.

Biding their time.

Then there was the food. The 'Big Banger' in Wellsford: essentially one sausage roll held together by three more sausage rolls. Yum. The two Parisians I ate one with both used knives & forks. The Kiwis in the shop; their hands. Your first Cameo Crème in five years in Waipawa. Here was the comfort of middle-age. Only crunchy.

Back on the road, hands waved from behind windscreens. Bogans and petrol-heads tailgated. As patient as souped-up Google search engines. Everyone in caravans and campervans puzzled by impossible place-names. Not worried about the RWC draw for an hour or two. Their only destination from A to B.

Follow him across New Zealand at his RWC Road Trip blog or on twitter @KeaKaharoadtrip.

* And bid for an (almost) romantic night for 2 in the Kea Kaha-Mobile... check out our Trade Me Herald On Sunday Charity auction Herald on Sunday Charity auction online.