Too Small a Space to Share

Today I had to travel with the hood up on The Handbag (my Mazda MX5 roadster).  The car is small at the best of times but when the hood is up and I am in the driver's seat there is not much room left for even a handbag (hence its name).  I set off from Gisborne at 0900.  Some 40 ks into the journey travelling down a long straight at 100 kph I suddenly became aware of something large on my left leg by my ankle.  Being a sports car one cannot see one's feet when driving at speed without endangering one's self or others.  I involuntarily moved my leg and a cicada  suddenly flew up and over my leg onto the right hand side door.  (The car is right hand drive).  Now cicada's don't bite nor do they sting.  But with a wing span of about 5cm they are not the best things to have sitting in the car making cicada noises and flying around.  The problem was that as this incident occurred I had to slow down into a sharp bend preceeded by a sign saying that there were sharp bends and steep hills for the next 7 ks.  And I am supposed to share this fairly demanding driving experience with a cicada which by this time has gone up the leg of my shorts.  By definition there is not a lot of leg up which to disappear and I became less than a happy bunny.  

As providence would have it although there were no official passing places I came upon a pull-off which had been used for road maintenance  and managed to leave the carriageway without doing any harm to my suspension or underneath:  sports cars are not generally noted for off-road capability.  After a while I located the cicada which had crawled down the side of the driver's seat and managed to evict it from the car.

All in all not an experience to be recommended.  However in line with my tendency to play The Glad Game I gave thanks that it hadn't been a wasp. 

The Nighthawk

I have never been particularly emotionally attached to any of my cars. That's not to say that I haven't liked them or enjoyed them or relied on them. I've had some wonderful times in my cars whether it be on the bench front seat of the Standard Ensign (which was my first car) in Bowring Park with Pat Stapleton or the adventures all over Britain and Europe with the many and varied cars and vans that I've had since then.

I very much enjoyed driving my little Peugeot 206 van and the Renault Kangoo van took Mo and me through France and over the mountains into Andorra and back down onto the Med.

I'd like to do a blog on my various cars if for no other reason than just to remind me about them and awaken memories. But somehow my present car is different. Called 'the hearse' by a neighbour of singularly morbid mind I decided to give my Honda Accord Tourer the name 'The Nighthawk'. It seemed appropriate because its colour is Nighthawk Black. I suppose that's to distinguish it from all the other blacks. Frankly I can never tell the name of one black from the name of another. I notice, though that the upmarket car interiors colour is now 'piano black'. I shall be leaving the Nighthawk behind in eight days when I go to New Zealand.

But when I get to New Zealand I'll have something completely different:

Opentoppenrodenholdenmachin

As CJ and I drove from Penrith to Keswick today we followed a Mazda MX5 with its hood down for 17 or so miles. Sitting as I was in a quiet, comfortable, air-conditioned (not that we had it on) tourer I felt a strong pang of desire to be back in my MX5 driving between Taupo and Napier on a warm summer's afternoon with no traffic as I did just after New Year this year. Just another 4 months and 1 week!