Well, it is now pretty much time to start working out how we are going to make this happen guys. To refresh, the plan is this…a group of us fly to the US (LA or SF), hire camper vans and drive 18hours (over a 2-3 days) to Missoula, get involved in a rugby tournament then head home. Some variations on the theme are: If we have enough for a team (~18) we will enter a team into the tournament and put our names forward for the opening game that they traditionally play against a foreign team on the Thursday night. If we don’t have a team then we will just show up and fill in for other teams as we can and flag the Thursday night option…ie maybe leave a day or so later. Some of us are thinking of making a bit of a trip out of the leg home by driving to Las Vegas to meet some girls (probably our wives/partners etc) spend a couple/few days then travel to LA and fly home via Hawaii for another couple few days. In terms of dates this will see us leaving NZ around the 4th of May, assembling in LA for a training run if we have a team then making our way across the Rockies in 8 birth RVs (4 to 6 persons per vehicle.) to Missoula, doing the rugby thing then heading back to LA on 11th to arrive there on the 13th and fly home for the 15th or there abouts. At this stage return flights to LA are around $1500 and it looks like an RV is in the order of $1000 per week so the travel component could be done for under $2k each, with the addition of food/drink etc during the trip - for the rugby side of things, if we don’t leave it too late. If you wanted to do the side trip back then I would budget an additional $200NZ a night accommodation with your partner (that is way more than enough in Vegas, and OK for Hawaii but you might need a little more if you want to be at a decent place in Waikiki. My rough working say adding on the Vegas/Hawaii bit would cost around another $4k for a partner to come up and accommodation…plus food drink and entertainment on top. When we first went out with the idea of this trip we got 11 people who said they were keen at this stage I can name 9 at this stage…plus I have also have a few ‘non player’s who have expressed interest, in brackets in the list below Me, Brett, Rob, Sharif, Aeneas, Sean, Shane, Andre, Jamie (Marty, Chopper, Neil & Ross) Sean said he might have a couple of mates from Aussie that would be keen, Matt Cornes could be a starter – anyone have his address) we have yet to go to the wider Legion group (ex players etc) and we could potentially go to the wider Social/Presidents group plus mates of people going along if need be. Key thing I think is to start by locking in some commitment and getting a bit of an organising committee together as this is five months away now, and obviously the longer we leave it the harder it will get to make happen and the more expensive it will get. So I am proposing that we start by locking into your availability, putting on a recruitment drive to gather more numbers (past players, mates, other players etc), volunteering to assist with organisation (I have a travel agent that can help but any other offers gratefully considered) then putting a deposit of, say $500 into the team account (details below) by the end of next Friday (12 Dec) as a confirmation that you are in…this will be refundable if the trip doesn’t go ahead but as of now it is a commitment deposit. Then we can then look to start making some tentative bookings. Happy to also look at fund raising opportunities…and any other ways we can help with funding…basically you need to be saving $100 a week till the trip, less if you put some on credit/mortgage…basically it will be the rugby/trip of a lifetime…just sayin!!! I will post this on face book and send it to our playing list from last year plus a selection of past players that I think might be interested please feel free to forward it wider as you see fit and see if you have anyone else that would like to be involved…contact me directly with questions, suggestions etc Don’t delay, act now to secure this once in a lifetime chance Cheers Mike
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 23:33:58 +0000
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