After travelling 11,000 kms we had to say a sad goodbye to Olive last week in Auckland.
For the most part, Olive has been the best car ever - no she really has. She's not just been our car, she's been our laundry, kitchen, bedroom, entertainment system, dining room, shelter from the storm, our lauder, fridge, storage system, in short, our first, our last, our everything. Without Olive we would have died ages ago, many times over, we owe her our LIFE!
She only ever let us down 3 or 4 times in 3 months. Once with her bottom, which refused to close. The second time we were discussing having to buy her a new pair of shoes as the other ones were getting pretty worn out, when she was forced to the limit of her tolerances on a gravel road and her shoe disintegrated there and then!
Roo and I had never changed a tyre before, but I have watched Chris Simpson change several of mine - (thanks Christopher!) so we decided to give it a bash. We discovered the spare whilst trying to find the place to put the oil - I know what you're thinking - but it's located in the bonnet and oil goes in under the driver’s seats, which involves dismantling the dashboard and removing all but one of the seats.
When we first discovered the flat tyre, we did sit there for a few minutes hoping that a nice young man might come to our rescue. Unfortunately only an elderly lady with a Scottie dog came to help, with suggestions of where to find a young man from. Manning up (I hate that expression!) we jacked Olive up, Roo jumped on the turney thing to loosen the bolty things, then we jacked her up a bit more, took the tyre off and shoved the other one on.
Half an hour passed quickly as did 6 cars filled with men who waved and gave a thumbs up, to which Roo responded in kind - we must have looked like we knew what we were doing. I have to say we were pretty good, within 35 minutes we were back on the road, but having little faith in our work I reduced my speed from 48 kmph to 35 kmp, infuriating the already road raged kiwi's further.
The only other time that Olive let us down (well she didn't really, it was our own fault) was when we flattened her battery whilst listening to the final of the rugby world cup on her radio. It was a tense game and as usual at times of stress Roo was asleep, otherwise we would have gone to the pub like the rest of New Zealand. Leaving the light on tipped Olive over edge and cost us any chance of starting her in the morning.
As I'm the communicative one and Roo is the organiser, I was assigned the task of finding a man with some jump leads. We had stayed the night by a canal, as a fortune had it, it was popular with the local fisherman so I set off, desperately in need of the loo but confident that we would find some in no time. Three quarters of an hour later and 2km away from the car, I still hadn't found anyone who had any. No longer caring about disturbing the fish and without a bridge for miles, I shouted across to a fisherman on the other side. Mercifully he had some. I had to explain where Olive was located as he was at the other side of the canal and off he jumped in his car to our rescue.
I tried running back to where Roo waited with Olive, with only flip flops to protect my feet from the stony ground. The fella arrived and loitered around the general area that Olive was, unnerving Roo. I knew all this would be happening, I could see it in my mind. Eventually he figured out and so did Roo that this was the help we'd sent out for and before you could say New Zealand 8 France 7 we were up and running!
We sold Olive at the Ellerslie Car Market to two Israeli boys called Tom and Omu. We had so much interest in Olive we managed to sell her for the asking price! She is Brill! They seem to fall in love with her just like we did and I'm sure they'll look after her, but it was still sad to have to say goodbye! :(
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