Monday, March 13, 2006

Adventurous Driving

Well, we covered a huge mileage this weekend - all in the name of classic motoring! I'm one of the organisers of a classic car group and we've got a car tour coming up next weekend so I. and I spent a fair proportion of this weekend out and about designing a route for participants.

We travelled on good, bad and indifferent roads and met the same sort of fellow drivers. I must admit I'm a bit more of a nervous nellie on shingle roads since our accident last year when our car got written off but some of the driving we saw over the weekend was APPALLING. For example, the guy in a ute that had a huge load of firewood that we had to follow for over 1/2 hour because he insisted on driving in the middle of the road, swerving out of the way of oncoming traffic. I suspect he never actually saw us but at one point we could have passed him on the left he was so far over to the right.

Another example: when driving on narrow roads, the courtesy is that downhill traffic gives way to uphill - except of course, if you're in a 4WD vehicle. Then, you don't have to show any road courtesy and can barge your way through. Followed by all 3 of your mates. Then when we were going downhill we met 2 4WD's towing trailers so we had to back back up the hill to find a place to pull over and let them past.

Other than those sort of examples, we thoroughly enjoyed our driving. Some of the roads were truly great and everyone should enjoy driving them and the views were fabulous. At one point we pulled over, looked back down the coast to the south and looked out over Lake Forsythe, Lake Ellesmere, Kaitorete Spit and the sea to the mountains in late afternoon sun. Fantastic.


This was the skyline as we drove out of Akaroa on our way home after eating fish & chips on the foreshore.

We had more motoring fun on Sunday as we had our club AGM. We'd decided that we needed to bribe people to come to the meeting so put on coffee and cake but still didn't get a brilliant turnout. More for us though. But the setting was great. We went to Terrace Downs which is a golf course and resort up the Rakaia Gorge. I'd never been there before and its great - you look out over the golf course and river to Mt Hutt and the Plains which just looked beautiful yesterday. I could have moved in.

With all the driving we did over the weekend, look what happened:

The poor little Alfa clocked 30000 this morning on the way to work!

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