Date:         Wed, 10 May 2000 19:06:33 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
Subject:      Re: Crash.....Bang.......Boom
Comments: To: Andrew Grebneff <andrew.grebneff@STONEBOW.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
In-Reply-To:  <v01550102b53ebda4b783@[139.80.94.12]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 18:23 5/10/2000, Andrew Grebneff wrote:
>Just be glad you Floridans get the reject Canadian drivers; Canadians
>aren't good drivers, but at least they have some level of courtesy. New
>Zealand drivers are really bad, and utterly discourteous as well.
>
>Andrew

I've driven in Auckland and Wellington, and (speaking as one who drives in
Boston a lot, or did then) I thought the drivers were pretty mild.  What
gave me the willies were all the cliffside roads with 200-foot drops, and
little 2x2 white painted sticks to indicate that driving off the side would
be quite a bad thing, all in all.  Over here we would make quite a serious
attempt to keep the car on the road.  But somewhat to my surprise there
didn't seem to be a blob of crumpled tin in every patch of gorse at the
bottom (just sheep).

Two other things struck me -- that driving there seemed to be "women's
work," and that a Toyota engine is really pretty small when accompanied by
a total lack of smog gear (this was 1985) and a manual choke.

david
ps -- they had the same little sticks in OZ, but not the cliffs, at least
not in Melbourne.
pps -- if anyone has read Dick Francis's _In the Frame_ -- I've stood at
the place where Our Hero went swimming through jagged rocks to avoid being
shot.  Didn't realize it until a year or so later, when I was reading the
book for the nth time.  And I bought a soda at what might have been the
store where he bought his shirt.
David Beierl - Providence, RI
  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"