Paul Hickey: Share memories of your road trips

New Zealanders love to hit the road.

Road trips. They are a Kiwi icon unto themselves aren't they? Whether it be daylong travels, longer holidays with the family, to the "rite-of-passage" trips with mates in later teenage years they can certainly provide some of the highlights of our lives. While most are great, some do turn out as disasters.

I was actually reminded of one such experience last week, when the Cricket World Cup Trophy Tour was in town. Former Kiwi cricketer Chris Harris was at the Village Green, and while having a chat for my radio show, he mentioned the World Cup semifinal game in 1992. A couple of mates and I had tickets to that game, and got more excited as it loomed likely that New Zealand would be playing in it. It was to be our first trip together to the big smoke, motel booked, and of course seeing our cricketing heroes in action. To cut a story short, driving up the morning of the game, my mate's car broke down just before the Bombays (teenagers' cars in 1992 were not all that reliable!), we missed New Zealand's great innings, and finally got to Eden Park to see the last few overs as Pakistan went nuts to knock us out. A bad road trip all up, but still memorable for the wrong reasons.

At The Hits we're running a Road trip photo competition at the moment. Check it out and you could win $2000 worth of Caltex fuel, more than enough for your road trips this coming summer!

It has been a pretty busy past week for yours truly, with a number of functions and events to attend both in official and personal capacities.

One such event was the annual fundraiser event for the local branch of Dress For Success called "Handbag Heaven". It was held in the Monarch Room at the Princes Gate Hotel, and it was my first time in this great little facility. What another gem of a venue that we have in our city!

Anyway the night was a huge success, but the blokes were certainly outnumbered by the ladies as you might expect. Peter actually bid on a couple of the handbags, local MP Todd McClay let his wife do the hard work this time, and I was too afraid that I would buy the wrong bag for my wife Katie, so I kept pretty still. To be honest auctions scare me!

The biggest auction of the week though, was the finale of The Block NZ on Friday.

I was not a big watcher of the show this year, but I think like all of the country was impressed by the gesture of the winners (who won $307,000) gifting $30,000 to the team who won only $10,000 after all their hard work. A touching moment for sure.

Do you have a favourite road trip memory? Comment below.

- Paul Hickey is the host of the locally based 9am to 3pm show on The Hits Rotorua 97.5FM. Follow on Facebook The Hits Rotorua and on Twitter @PaulH515.