It’s 9.30 am Thursday on the 20th of January 2011 were sitting nervously and excited in the Palmerston North Airport waiting for our boarding call. Scott and Nick both headed up the day before, Scott by car and Nick by plane also. After a coffee and bit of food our boarding call finally came and we headed for the plane. Apart from Kayla’s emergency foot break outburst during the flight it was pretty smooth journey to Auckland.
Arrived about lunchtime, Scott was there to meet us and we made our way down to Mt Smart Stadium. Once there it was amazing to see how everything went down behind the scenes from setting up the stages to sorting out the fencing etc and watching it all come together was very cool. We also met our ‘V’ team who was to work with us during the next day all the girls were beautiful and very friendly. Nick, Scott and Derek Booth had already set up the main line and the two platforms we need and all that was left to do was the braking system and the anchors for the main line.
During the day we were lucky enough to have a couple bands (including Tool!!!!!!) doing sound check for their performance the next day which was awesome, kinda like having our own private show almost and a sound guy had us all in fits of laughter with his “check, check, 1, 2, hey, hey, hello, yeah, yeah.
After a busy day we went to Ascot Epsom Motel where we stayed for the few days while we were there and then to the Cock N Bull English Pub and Brewery for dinner. Back at the Motel after dinner we started to build the rigging we needed for the next day and then off to the Casino for couple hours. Nick went straight down to the poker tables and but changed his mind because the tables were way too packed, he watched for a bit and come back to the slots machines. After a few hours we all decided to leave and hit the sack
Friday the 21st of January, its 5:30 a.m and we are off down to Mt Smart, we’ve got 6 a.m start for the Breakfast show with Tamati Coffey and the crew for their morning show. After the crew had been and gone we were doing a few extra tests with some water weights and were lucky enough to have Justin Chancellor (bass player) from Tool and his wife come up and do a test ride as well.
11 a.m and the gates were opened and from the platforms we watched the hoards of people flood through the stadium like a plague of some sort, it very real cool to see but we didn’t get started until about 12.30 due to last minute hold ups from V and there paper work (or lack of it) still waiting to get a few consent forms signed, but that didn’t stop the punters who were keen and eager and had been waiting with registration forms signed and ready since 11. As soon as the paper work arrived we were straight into business with a very busy day had by all staff. 7 hours and 436 riders later we decided to close up and call it a day. We were all that exhausted we didn’t even want to stay and watch the headline acts we were just ready to leave, but could we even get out of there? No we couldn’t!! we got to one gate and the guards said we couldn’t leave for some kind of OSH reason and it took us about another hour to even get out of the stadium after being redirected to 3 or 4 different exit gates.
Once we finally got out of Mt Smart Stadium we went down to a little restaurant just around the corner from the Cock n Bull on Davis Crescent called Safran Cafe Restaurant. The food and service was amazing (highly recommend it) our waiter was awesome, did everything from getting our chairs and ash trays when we went outside for a ciggy to even recommending some of the food for us to order it was excellent service all round, Scott made sure he was well tipped. So back to the Motel we went and straight to bed after a long and busy day.
All in all was an awesome week and we really enjoyed our time and hopefully we will get to do something else like that in the near future.
Thats all for now
Peace
