Sweet Chariot had fared us well during our stay in New Zealand. We had pushed her to the edge of her limits but she had always managed to pull through to the other side. She must have known that her time in our company was coming to a close for now that we were stationed in Taupo eagerly watching the days creep by, she decided to show her feeling of disdain.
“I only saved blessings for very rare occasions and this was definitely one of them”
It started with a brief cough of the engine but the little tickle in her throat eventually spread to her eye. Within a day, her left bulb was gone. Like all sicknesses, her symptoms gradually travelled south towards her rear end and by the eve of the second day, the boot was completely locked shut. It wouldn’t budge. The lock was jammed. We needed to get it working again. If we failed to do so, selling the car would be extremely difficult. The opening and closing aspect of the boot was one of our main selling points so it was vital we got it seen to.
We thought long and hard about a cheap solution but in the end we agreed that it was best to take it to a garage. As it happened, Mitsubishi had a dealership in the town so if anyone knew how to fix the damn thing, they would. We got up early the next morning and headed straight for the dealership. We needed to get in and out as quickly as possible. Time spent away from the computers in the library was time that could have been spent searching for potential buyers. As the car was rolled into the garage and the mechanics gathered around, I blessed myself. I only saved blessings for very rare occasions and this was definitely one of them. We were asked to empty the contents from our car so they could get a closer look, a humiliating task in itself for as soon as we opened the doors, the mechanics saw who we really were. A look of pity was all I could see as the entire garage realised that this vehicle was more than just a means of transport to us. After twenty minutes or so, the problem was found. A small, inexpensive spring had managed to come loose and we were told that it would only take five minutes to fix. “But at what cost”, I said to Ciara as we watched the mechanics feet dangle outside the rear door as he reached in and inserted the new spring.
They must have felt very sorry for us indeed for they didn’t charge us a cent. Delighted with ourselves, we dashed across the road and bought a new bulb and a white marker in a nearby hardware store. By lunchtime, the car was driving as if it had just come off the assembly line. Our lights blinked into life and the boot opened and closed at a moments whim. We even succeeded in covering up any minor dents and scratches with the white marker. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly well. But like all things in life, there’s always another side to every coin. It didn’t take long for the situation to flip.
The following morning, we awoke to dull, misty and overcast weather. Like any safe driver would do in similar conditions, we turned on our lights as we headed off towards the library. As it was daytime, we were not used to turning our lights off so I suppose you could say it was a force of habit that made us to completely forget to do so as we left the car that morning. Unbeknown to our error of judgement, we signed in to a library computer and began to scour the web for potential buyers. I came up with the bright idea to re-list our car on the backpacker board, therefore putting us back to the top of the list but something happened and the server went down in the middle of the transfer. Once the page finally reloaded, an error message flashed across the screen informing us that our ad would not be refreshed until a moderator had the chance to approve it. This was the worst news conceivable. No approval meant that our ad was offline. An offline ad meant that precious time was being wasted as we drew nearer to our departure date.
As lunch rolled around, we decided to leave the library to get a breath of fresh air. We got into the car and turned the ignition. Nothing happened. We tried again. Still nothing. We were about to try a third time when Ciara noticed the lights. They had been left on for over five hours and now the battery was completely dead. At that, the heavens opened and rain began to pummel down out of the sky. “THIS ISN’T HAPPENING!!!”, I screamed as I sat there staring blindly out of the windscreen. “HOW ARE WE GOING TO FIX THIS!!??”. Ciara pointed towards the building in front of us. “The police”, she said. “They’ll know what to do”. The local precinct was attached to the side of the library and we had happened to park right in front if it’s main doors.
We got out of the car quickly and made a dash for the building. Twenty minutes later, a policeman finally opened the shutters and came to our aid. We explained the situation and he went off into the back in search of a pair of jump leads. Another twenty minutes later (it must have been donut day), he arrived back with a pair of leads draped over his shoulder. We showed him where we were parked and he told us we would have to move the car out of that space in order to allow him to gain access to our battery. I took one look at the rain and shook my head. We ran back outside towards the car. Ciara jumped in the front seat and I prepared to push it out of the car parking space. As soon as I began to force the car out onto the road, the surrounding storm grew stronger. Rain attacked me from every angle and within a few milliseconds, I was absolutely soaked to the bone. I gave up trying to keep dry and focused on getting the car into the right position. Eventually, we got it out of the space and lined up with the policeman’s car. He got it to start immediately and we breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one”, I said to Ciara as I waved to the policeman and got into the passenger seat. I was shivering uncontrollably and my hands were totally numb.
“We need to head back inside to see if our listing is live again”, Ciara said. “You also need to get dry”, she continued. We bypassed lunch and parked ourselves in front of a computer terminal. We refreshed the page and our car jumped straight back up to the top of the listings. It was live again. We sat back, relaxed and waited. The hours passed by and still there were no enquiries about the car. We were just about to give up hope when my phone beeped and a message came through. It was a backpacker. The message said they were in Auckland and were extremely interested in viewing the car. They wanted to see it as soon as possible. I replied and told them we were only two hours away and could be there by lunchtime the following day.
We left the library shortly afterwards and drove to the nearby supermarket. As I passed a four dollar pizza bread to the checkout clerk, she winked at me and lifted the bread up over the scanner and into an adjacent plastic bag. She had given us the pizza for free. It was as if she knew what we had just gone through. ” I have a good feeling about tomorrow”, I said as we left the supermarket with our free meal and walked out into the car park. The rain had stopped and the birds had begun to chirp. “Something tells me our lives are about to change for the better”. We went back to the car and drove back towards what would be our last ever night sleeping in the wilderness. Our time as beggars was coming to a close and soon we would be tourists again.∗
