The Shittiest Road Trip Ever

Oh the serenity. What a difference 24 hours makes. We decided to do the Sydney- Noosa trip in one day, our first mistake but definitely not our last.  Not my call but hey, I can't win them all and I thought OK, the kids are older and if we are on the road by 6ish we could do it by sharing the driving.

In anticipation of the pending heatwave, I was up by 5am to water the garden, which I have nursed along all year.  We were on the road by 6.30 and all was good with the world. We managed to avoid the RBT unit at Wahroonga which was causing a traffic jam. But I thought oh well if it means less drunks driving north on a dangerous road on one of the busiest days of the year then, what's 15 minutes between friends. As we turned onto the M1 I relaxed back into the passenger seat, with happy thoughts of the beautiful destination awaiting us.

The traffic was light and Google said we had 11 hours to go plus breaks, so how hard can this be? Incredibly hard, as it was ultimately to turn out.

It was seconds before the Gosford exit that a little voice from the littlest Beach House Brat pipes up in the back seat and says, " Dad did you clip the boat on?" It's kind of a fundamental when you are heading to compete in the Impulse Dinghy  Nationals.

The penny had dropped and we realised in nanoseconds we couldn't just say "ho ho ho," stuff it we forgot the boat.  We absolutely had to get off this freeway. Stat.

At that point out of the corner of my eye, I see Mr Beach House's hand go up to his mouth as he simultaneously dropped the F bomb realising the last hour and a half of driving had been wasted and retracing our steps back to the factory to get the boat would add 3 hours to our 11.5 hour trip.

In a great effort to exit the M 1 not a second later than he had to, Mr Beach House crossed 3 lanes at speed and with screeching wheels we made the Gosford exit by a bee's dick. Lucky the traffic was still light.

Mr Beach House had spent most of Boxing Day finishing the boat and packing his sailing gear into it. Sooooooo organised. Ha ha.

On the day of our trip, because he had spent the morning packing only biking gear and putting bikes on the roof and had not touched so much as a wetsuit that morning, his brain was convinced we were off to one of the many biking events he attends with The Biggest Beach House Brat during the year. That was his reason for forgetting, but actually, every one of us needs to take responsibility for the stuff up, except The Littlest Beach House Brat, but it would have been better if she'd remembered on Mona Vale Rd. God love her. At least Gosford was better than our first planned stop of Taree.

Effectively it was now like leaving at 9.30. We ended up hitting endless traffic in parts and the trip took 17.5 hours. In that time we could have flown past Dubai and been over the Med. Absolute nightmare.

 To top it off when we got to our resort we were so brain dead we drove into the carport with the bikes on the roof. At that stage I was so tired I wanted to cry. Luckily no damage to bikes or carport as it was slow, but the car roof has a nice dent the size of a 50c piece where a bike pedal crashed onto it to remind us forever of one of the shittiest road trips we have ever done. Let's just say we will be doing the trip home across 2 days. There's nothing like learning the hard way.

PS Lunch at The Spirit House with an old teaching buddy I haven't seen for 17 years was absolutely worth the trip.