Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Finding the weakness

I was driving into town the other day - doing the mother thing, with two carseated children, the buggy, the bag of kids stuff for the different ' what if' scenarios.
Suddenly roaring up behind me was a white car, lowered, loud, drum beat pumping. He was right on my bumper. Usually I don't mind this kind of person. Sometimes I even admire their car control and confidence - which is much better than mine. But this one was being annoying, hassling me forward.
Of course I joined in the battle and made sure I went the speed limit and not a kilometre per hour faster.
Here we were almost locked together, both probably cursing the other.
I checked my rearview mirror again to see what he was up to. He had dropped far behind. Then I realised we had crossed the bumpy railway tracks with its slap dash ashfelt, sticking up in all sorts of mounds and lumps. He was still carefully negotiating them in his lowered car.
My tail was free and I laughed. All that menace beaten by a slight undulation in the road surface. The opponent was too easily foiled.
But if we met again in town and had to race on foot. He would beat me easily. Me with my buggy, my bag, my independently minded children getting sidetracked by the smallest thing.

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5 Favourite Sights Seen

  • 1996 Watching tropical lightning turn night to day, outside a little wooden church in a small village in Sabah.
  • 2004 Flying down the Rainbow Valley at 8000ft in a cessna on a clear blue day.
  • 2003 Seeing and hearing Michael Schmacher rolling out of the pit garage in his Ferrari in Hungary.
  • 2009 Chancing upon 100 or more dolphins just off the Kaikoura Coast swimming around, jumping out of the water, doing somersaults and generally having fun.
  • 2006 Finding a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the bush at Kaikoura that was full of playing baby seals.