A Challenging Day

Strange as it may seem, but more & more I am finding the thought of doing things that stretch my abilities a lot less abhorrent now than I used to. I guess that it comes from having to interface with people a lot more now that Herself can't. I used to leave all the wheeling & dealing up to her & just sort of switch off when I came home, but the realisation that it is going to have to be me doing all this sort of stuff from now on is a challenge. I guess that I will rise to it.

My challenge lately has been that my Boss has given me the early run, (6.00 am start) to Auckland at least twice a week. This involves handling a 550hp 8 wheel Scania & trailor through rush hour motorway traffic & backing & manoevering it once I get to where I load up. 12 months ago, I would have found the prospect terrifying, but I enjoy it now. I had a really bad intro to big trucks. I was given the Volvo on the side of the road by another driver & had never even sat in it let alone driven it. The guy I took over from wasn't really that interested in showing me the finer points, let alone being helpful, so I just had to pick it up on my own, not a good thing to have to do at 5.30 in the afternoon in Auckland.

When I got back to the depot yesterday, I was given the crane truck, which I had just restrung with a new lifting cable, with a load of tiles for Whitianga, & a kitset trailor for someone 8 km up the Whiti side of the Tapu Coroglen road. When I stopped to check my load at the top of Sailors Grave, I saw this...

Its difficult to see, but he only has about 6 inches either side of the gate posts & the house is fairly firmly wedged between trees. Thats the sort of challenge that I dont think I will ever be up for. The guys that drive the house transporters are amazing.

Anyway, I managed to get my load off the deck of the truck with the crane without incident & finished up 8 km up the Tapu road, so the sensible thing was to carry on all the way over to Tapu. I'm glad that I did. It brought back some lovely memories like going through there as side kick to help unload the weekly truck & trailor trip that a company called Parker Wilson Transport used to make to Whitianga. We take more freight through in a day now. Like visiting the old eccentric at the top who had prominent signs up stating, "trespassers will be shot." I was working for a prospecting company that had the rights for a block in behind his place, & permission to cut through his farm would have saved us over an hours walk. We plied him & his sons with huge amounts of alcohol & we all finished up as drunk as lords. It didn't help though. his parting words were, "You're still not fucking well going to set foot on my property." We believed him & took it seriously. The month before, him & his boys had 3 guys from a rival company bailed up in a patch of scrub on his place by shooting over their heads with old army rifles for about 3 hours. They had to stay there until it was dark enough to sneak out.

I've also been lucky enough to see the very rare Hochstetters frog in a side stream up there. I've only ever seen the one, but I consider myself very priveleged to have done so. memories are wonderful things aren't they? They allow you to escape reality for a few precious minutes every once in a while.