A car named Blue Ivy, a biography.

I think taking a big road trips are a right of passage.

Maybe it's to the beach, or the mountains, or if you're feeling really crazy, maybe it's a trip to Grandma's house.

I've gone on trips with my parents and I've gone on trips with school or for church and in college for club sports. But this far in my life, and at the time in my life, they don't count as rites of passage into the real adulthood or out of the weird ways of teenage-dom. Some of them were vacations, some were field trips and some were completely obligatory and very far from the 'big road trip'

As a be-speckled, brace-faced 11 year old, I had this idea that my own big road trip would be across the USA in a remodeled VW Bus (11 year olds are into cliches apparently) with my best friend. We'd see the Gateway to the West in St. Louis, search for Dorothy in Kansas, stand in 4 states at once at the bottom left side of square state Colorado. Then there was the Grand Canyon, San Fran, maybe to Oregon because what the fuck do two 11 year Kentucky girls know about the Pacific Northwest anyhow? Maybe we'd go East instead of West? Or South or north? But the plan was always this:
1. Get the fucking bus.
2. Road trip.

Too easy right? Wrong. Haven't gotten the fucking VW bus.

Fast forward about 10 years. The big cross country road trip was and is on my list of things I'd like to do. Only now at the age of 20 going on 21, I think I want to blog my way across America. You know, see the sights, smell the smells, SEE MY HOMELAND.

Fast forward to right now. I'm 22 going on 23. I'm in New Zealand and 2 days ago we rented a car. Why is this awesome?

1. I'm under the age of 25 and in the states there would be no way for me to rent a car by myself.
2. We are road trippin' in New Zealand.
3. I repeat we are road trippin' in New Zealand.

There's no VW bus in my story, not quite anyways, in this story we have a late 90's Toyota Corolla. And in honor of Beyonce and Jay Z, we have named her Blue Ivy. If you do not understand this 2010s pop culture reference, please refer to my good friend Google.

In 2 days, Blue Ivy hasn't been without her ups and downs. She drives like a charm, her turning radius is absolutely stellar but her battery may or may not have died yesterday.

2 days after the initially renting, we've seen the Glaciers, Franz Josef and Fox, and now we are in the adrenaline, and alcohol fueled city of Queenstown.

These are my rites of passage. I don't know what the passage is to yet, but I'm figuring it out.

Together with our new Canadian friend Catherine (we met her 2 or 3 posts ago) we've set out on quite literally the road trip of a lifetime. And at this point, 2 days in, the United States doesn't stand a fighting chance.