On Monday night we sent the guy who owned the ute a text asking when we should pick it up, and the bombshell was dropped. Apparently the test it was sitting on Tuesday was not the final warrant but just an initial test to check on what needed fixing, and it would be another week before it would be ready to drive. How this misunderstanding came about I’m still not quite sure, but however it happened it was somewhat of a problem.

We couldn’t sit around Auckland for a whole week, and we needed to get home. Our only options were to take a bus ourselves and arrange for the ute to be trucked down to Hawkes Bay - which, with petrol this high, would be terribly expensive – and there fix it and certify it ourselves; Bus back home, leave the car in Auckland for the couple of weeks it would need and then fly or bus back up to collect it; or drop out of the sale.

Worst of all, it was going to take the whole day to sort it out, which meant my last hopes of seeing Prince Caspian in the theatres were dashed. Ok, maybe not worst of all, but that was a bit of a disappointment, too.

We still hadn’t actually seen the ute, so we arranged to go and have a look at it the next morning. We decided that if we really loved it and couldn’t bear to let it drop we’d do what we could, but if we weren’t totally happy with it anyway then it just wasn’t worth it.

So we got up early and caught the bus, and ambled along to his house. The ute was very impressive. It was very big and very low and very sporty. Big according to New Zealand standards, however; our roads are narrow and windy and half the Big American Trucks wouldn’t even fit on them. Honestly, your roads! Well, they’re certainly something for a Kiwi to behold, I can tell you! I’d bet a good half of you Americans have never actually driven a proper corner at 100ks! Or 60 miles, or whatever…

Just a sec, let me find you a pic or two…
 

It was all fitted out pretty nicely. There were a couple of things we were concerned about, though. Firstly, the roof leaked. Pretty badly. It had been a bit of a home job, and the seals were wasted. They had had a soft top for it for summer, but the guy had taken it apart to modify it and had munted it a bit, so we’d have to get a new one of those made up too. Secondly, the suspension was lowered. *winces* It might look racy, but it doesn’t make for the most comfortable ride. And Thirdly, the whole build and bodywork was a bit rough. It looked ok, but it just wasn’t quite finished.

All in all, it was slightly rough, but we would have been quite happy with it if it had been ready for it. For the price it was pretty great, and we were prepared to do a bit of fixing it up before it was all peachy. But it wasn’t ready, and that was the thing. I would have been ok with trucking it down and bussing ourselves home, but it was him who would be paying most of it, so it wasn’t really up to me!

I think it was the suspension that decided Dad. He’s had a bit of back trouble, and he just didn’t relish the idea of a bumpy ride, after the comfort of the MPV. Plus the difficulty of having to organize the fixing ourselves. My Dad, see, is the kind of guy who can do just about anything, and is also very finance conscious. So he’s the kind of guy who would never let anyone else do something like that if he could do it himself, and he really wasn’t relishing the thought of doing it, I think!

So we talked it over with the guy and he agreed to relist it. He had had heaps of interest in it and he thought he could get more for it if he warranted it first anyway, so he was pretty sweet with that.

And we left without a car. It was pretty disappointing, after finding something that seemed so perfect and looking forward to it for weeks and telling all one’s friends about it… *sigh*

We had arranged to go to my Aunty and Uncle’s house on one side of Auckland for dinner and we had several things to do on the other side. After our disappointing trek that morning we really didn’t feel like waiting for busses and switching them and everything, so we just hired a rental car at the first place we came across.

It felt good to be in a car, even if it wasn’t ours, and we were a little heartened by it. So we trotted back to the telecom shop where I used their wifi to say hi to all my blogging friends – well, the ones on my cbox, anyway – and Dad talked to the guys a bit more about his troublesome PDA. When Dad was finished we logged onto Turners and looked at their cars up for auction. Out of the hundreds of cars they had on auction that night only about twenty were manual, and only about three of those would have worked. And none of them were convertible.

Dad said they were sports cars, but none of them were cute sports cars. And, not being a car expert or a fast driver, I don’t really care what it is or who made it, I just want a car that’s going to get me from A to B and look cute while it’s doing it. Admittedly the Ute wasn’t exactly cute, but it was fun, which is almost as good.

And these cars might have had sporty engines, but, honestly, who cares? It isn’t the engine one looks at, and who cares that it can go to 300ks when the speed limit’s 100ks? Cars that are eternally wanting to go faster are just a pain to drive, anyway. There was a little red Mazda Autozam which Dad liked. I thought it was a pretty boring car, actually, after the ute… but then, everything seemed to look boring after the ute. We had another look at TradeMe and decided, while we were there, to drive over to see a couple of cars which looked interesting in a sales yard a bit away.

We ended up going to the wrong sales yard at first, and after they had told us the location of their rivals they detained us for a while to show us their own ‘better’ cars. Then while we were leaving we saw another one or two sale yards across the road, and then another four, etc, etc. Then we ended up stopping along the road at several more interesting looking car yards… honestly, the place was teaming with car salesmen of various shapes and sizes, it was dizzying.

Anyhow, it was tragic how few manual cars we saw. Each yard might have three manuals, all the cars coming out nowadays seem to be autos… *shakes head*

Finally, about twenty car yards down the road, we arrived at our destination. There we met a rather tubby islander lady with a perpetual smile and anxious eyes. There we discovered that the car had been moved to another sale yard in their chain just down the road a couple of days before. When she heard that we had seen it on the internet and had established that we had not come through any other agent in her chain her eyes took on a slightly maniacal excitement, and she insisted on personally escorting us to the sale yard to inspect it. We told her that we were sure we could find it ourselves, but she was insistent, and zoomed away in her car as fast as she could.

When we arrived at the other yard she was waiting, key in hand, to escort us to the car, where she hovered around popping the boot and starting the engine so we could see how it sounded and insisting we sat in it to see how comfortable the seats were and showing us the controls and worrying over the prominent lump of bird poo dropped on the roof. The maniacal light was in her eyes and her smile flashed at every opportunity.

It was quite a nice car; a cheap, economical Mazda Demio in a pretty bright blue. It was tall and not at all long, though, which gave it a very stubby look, and it simply didn’t have a bit of style to it.

We told her we were just looking at the moment and we’d return if we decided to buy it. Her smile vanished and she watched with despair as we walked away. Poor woman. She was so very, very obviously paid per sale.

I don’t know why all the cars we looked at were Mazdas. We didn’t do it on purpose, it just happened that way. It’s especially weird since both my Mum and Dad’s cars are Mazda… I guess they’re pretty popular here! *shrugs*

By the time we had to leave for my Aunty and Uncle’s house we still hadn’t found anything particularly nice. There were several cars that would have done, and I had resigned myself to a little dark grey Toyota which was unremarkable but still quite a nice car.

We arrived at my Aunty and Uncle’s house and were greeted enthusiastically by cousins and Aunty alike. I was soon absorbed in energetic romping with my little cousins, while Dad talked to my Aunty about our car finding woes.

He still liked the Autozam best, so he rang Turners and had a guy stand in the auctions for him. Half an hour later, while I was running around the lounge furniture being chased by three ferocious, weapon brandishing ‘tigers’, he informed me that we had been the highest bidders so had won. The car was still a long way beneath reserve, though, so they were going to negotiate with the seller and get back to us.

To be continued…

I am back, everyone!

Not that most of you won’t probably not have heard anything about my going away in the first place… I meant to tell you, I just got busy. Or continued busy, rather. *eyeroll*

Anyhow, I have spent the last… must be a good six days! in Auckland and various other parts of the country. The first few days were spent in Rotorua at a locksmithing conference with my dad. We travelled up on Friday with Clive, a local locksmith from Napier, in his old, rumbly, bouncy work van. Now, being a locksmith it is necessary to fill ones van with an assortment of tools, locks, key blanks and other bits of metal. Added up, this is pretty heavy, and puts rather a load on the suspension. And as a result, the seats can be almost as hard and bruising as a horse to ride on for any length of time… *winces at the memory*

Also, I was seated between two locksmiths for the extent of the two hour trip, and, being both locksmiths, the entirety of the conversation revolved around various locksmithing experiences. Some of this is interesting, of course, and in theory I could have learnt something from it, but in practice… well, you must understand that in locksmithing one has thousands upon thousands of different key types and lock types and car types and transponders and systems, and they’re all identified by random number and letter code sequences. So veterans will know them all by heart and use five in one sentence, while the apprentices trying to follow the conversation will quickly tire of asking exactly what each one refers to… *sigh*

 Anyhow, I shall not dwell on that journey. Suffice to say we made it to Rotorua in one piece, with no lasting damage to our rear ends.

The conference is usually held in the same place, in a really posh hotel in the city. My Dad and I had been once before, and this time we decided to stay at a motel down the road rather than in the hotel. The motel was less than half the price, for one thing, and it had free internet that was twice as fast as the expensive connection in the posh one. It was a nice place, too, clean and nice with big spas and mineral baths.

Rotorua, you see, is situated on a whole lot of volcanic steam vents. They have pillars of stem rising from any cracks in the ground, and huge puddles of boiling mud around the place, and if you dig a hole you’ll find the ground is really warm. This means that they have an abundance of hot water springs and spas just flowing out of the ground, which it’s quite famous for.

It has some unpleasant side effects, however, one of which is the smell. It’s a difficult smell to place, but comes very close to what is often referred to as ‘rotten egg farts’. The locals get used to it.

I shall move on, before this becomes another of my too well known New Zealand lectures… *eyeroll*

The conference was fun. I learnt quite a bit, and it was fun to be a bit celebrityish for a while! Locksmithing, you see, is a bit of a male dominated trade. Not for any real reason; it isn’t as if one needs an unusual lot of strength or a one-track male mind or anything, I think it’s just something girls don’t really consider taking up. There’s only one female locksmith in the whole of New Zealand that I’m aware of, and I’ve never actually met her since she doesn’t seem to come to any of the conferences. So the only other women there weren’t actually there for the conference, which made me rather stand out.

It was quite fun, actually; being a girl gives you a lot of freedom! None of the guys expect from me what they would of the other guys, so if I do well in something then they’re all very impressed, and if I take a bit longer or ask questions or some such thing then no one thinks anything of it and they’re all very eager to explain or lend a hand. There’s a lot less pressure, I think.

Time went pretty fast, despite the non-stop locksmith talk, and on Saturday night we hitched a ride with a couple of Dad’s other locksmith friends up to Auckland. That was a fun trip; we talked politics and overseas travel and economy and Australia and politicians and global warming scares and politics. As we were all pretty right-wing we got on pretty well, despite the dodgy subjects! And in the comfortable car the four hour trip went a lot faster than the two hour one in the noisy, bumpy van! Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m soft. But I’m allowed to be; I’m a pretty, helpless female, after all. ;) I don’t have to be tough. Oh, how I should hate to be a guy… :D

*coughs*

Ah… yes. Anyhow.

We made it to my Auntie’s flat. She lives really close to the enormous rugby stadium dominating the centre of Auckland, and it was almost impossible to get to her flat as most of the streets had been closed off to all but foot traffic so the fans could leave the stadium without traffic jamming the whole of the city. Rugby’s a big thing here, see. Of course, in America many of you will never have heard of the sport… *sigh* Basically it’s a lot like American football only with tackling going on all over the field rather than just at the centre, and without all the helmets and padding and protective junk. Obsessed over in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, and quite popular through much of Europe.

Anyhow, we got to my Auntie’s flat. Which reminds me that I still have not explained the point of this escapade; why was I in Auckland in the first place? Quite simply, I had brought a car.

Or more specifically, a ute.

Or even more specifically, a blue Mazda B200 convertible ute, or ‘truck’ as you Americans call them. It was a hand built thing and very sporty, lowered and fitted out with all the works, LED lights and everything.

I got it off Trade-me, you see, the NZ equivalent to eBay. We had been looking for a car for me for a while, but I wanted a convertible and we wanted it to be blue and manual and with at least four seats and needed something under $5000ish, so the right car was difficult to find. One night as we were looking at various cars Jerusha arrived and begged us to buy a ute, and I joked that I’d be fine with that so long as it was convertible, and Dad had laughingly looked one up.  Then, voila! there it was! With a $2500 buy-now, no less.

We stared in open mouthed astonishment that something could fit all our requirements so perfectly.

There was nothing for it, we had to buy it. It wasn’t warranted at that moment, but the guy said that for an extra thousand bucks he could fix up the rust it needed and have it warranted and ready for us to pick up. He told us he’d take it for the test on Tuesday, so we travelled up to the conference and were going to linger around Auckland until it was ready and then pick it up and drive it home.

So we lingered. My Aunty was working most of the time, but we spent the evenings with her and bussed around the city visiting and shopping and doing errands. We were going to go to see Prince Caspian which is still running here and which I still haven’t had a chance to see, but all of the screenings were either early in the morning or late at night, so we couldn’t find a time that would suit. I guess I’ll just have to wait until the DVD comes out, as I did with the first one. *sigh* It’s so frustrating; I was actually looking forward to this one far more than I was LWW, and after all I’ve heard about it… *groans with impatience*

But we had fun anyway. It felt so good to be free of kids and responsibilities for a few days, and just relax and go where we wanted.