I've been away a couple of days, then yesterday was spent mainly
recovering.
1,000 km round trip, towing a long vehicle recovery trailer behind the Range
Rover, from Clyde to Christchurch and back, over my "normal" "alpine" route
which includes some difficult ascents even if they are not terribly long as
ascents go.
I had a 1967 Peugeot 404 KF2 (fuel-injected) sedan in Christchurch which I
had tried to sell on-line, but I didn't get the price I think this rare beast
deserves. So I made the (probably stupid) decision to bring it down here,
where I will be able to clean it up, and not be under huge time pressure to
sell, and no longer be in the previous smaller market I was confined to, now
that the time now available will increase.
I hired a self-loading vehicle recovery trailer. Behind the RR, it was a long
rig. It proved to be very well designed and made. Towed like a dream, and
easy to reverse. It's amazing how much respect other traffic gives a long
bare-metal trailer in heavy urban Christchurch rush-hour traffic. (I decided to
cross the city to visit my brother) Just indicate lane-change in good time and
all potential challengers for the intended space just back off :-) Took me a
little time to adapt to the necessary wide turning circle; I "nearly" wiped off
the map a couple of times in a tight manoeuvre the end bowsers when lining
up to refuel :-) !
And the RR performed very well and I learned a bit more about heavy load
handing and hills.
The brightest part of the trip was picking up a hitch-hiker (with a huge back-
pack) at a place called Tekapo, who was headed to Timaru, about 2 hours
more or less along my path. A young French woman who has been out of
France for more than 2 years; 2 years in Australia, some in SE Asia, and 7
months in NZ including a lot of time where I now live. Very pleasant
company, and we found shared preferences in music and other cultural
interests. I even managed to recall some of my long-ago learned French
language.
Considering it is supposed to be the middle of winter here, my (informed)
choice of days was ideal; no ice worth mentioning on the roads and no
snow. The weather forecasting people did a great job. The proverbial
"window of opportunity".
In many ways it was sad to visit my brother, but at least he is still alive. On
the day (22 Feb) of a massive earthquake shock ( I had been in Chch the
day before at a funeral) he had been assessing his old, large, 2-storey,
double-brick 1870's mansion with an Insurance Assessor. This person
wanted to go inside, and my brother forbad it. 5 minutes later, while they
were outside the building, and fortunately not under any of the brick-work
arches, the 6.7 magnitude shallow quake struck. Large brick chimneys fell
right through the structure where they might have been, and also the arches
crumbled before their eyes. The outside walls assumed crazy angles but
fortunately did not fall on any of the parked vehicles. Mainly to forestall
problems with the Historic Places Trust, he had all the wreckage off-site and
in a private dump within 48 hours ! He could salvage nothing ( most stuff of
value was long before removed to storage).
So it felt weird to be able to park my long rig on flat compacted gravel where
once a magnificent building stood.
Brian Swale.
http://www.brianswale.com
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