Step ten. Ok, back on track.

After a low month of incessant, verging on compulsive, TradeMe trawling rendered up an 'Ooo, should go see that!' in New Plymouth. It was a new listing and a couple of other trucks I thought might do vanished within a day or so of their going on the market. So a phone call later and a trip to the upper Waikato was on for 1st thing next day.

Three and half hours after an 8.30 start saw Pop and I looking over this.

Oh my! Well hello! An '89 Isuzu Elf in nicely tarted up condition. It was sort of karmic tho, it was supposed to be the daughter's horse truck, Daddy being of means and inclination picked this up in less than lovely condition. A well used delivery trick with rust and generally ickiness. It started life with a 5 speed automatic gear box that was replaced by a 5 speed manual item by Daddy. There is a whole christmas tree's worth of now non applicable lights on the dashboard. No a/c or exhaust brake either, sadly.  24 Volt. Went for a short drive, seemed to go ok.
 
On the bright side, daddy's panelbeater cut and welded all the rust then painted it a nice nondescript white. The cab upholstery was redone in red paisley and a huge tray and solid tow bar added. The deck is huge , 4550mm by 2200mm. By my measuring it'll swamp the camper body by about 90mms a side. More on this later.

Some brake and injector work later and it was given to Daughter. Dad, it's too slow, I want a faster one. So a short deal later it was all mine.

Dad was a nice guy, an earth works and transport contractor as it turned out. Now the truck was mine, how to get it home...

My original plan called for leaving it there and coming back a couple of days later with a driver. Dad's wife Mum (nice lady too, must be something in the water.) worked for a car hire company. She had it figured that I could pick up a rental for delivery in Wellington, drive it to New Plymouth, pick up the truck and drive home. Long day in the saddle but well do-able.

Or.....


We could put the station wagon on the back of the truck......ooooooo..... 'Oh sure,' said Horse Truck Dad, 'no problem.'  Oh right, there will be a ramp here some place. No, better.

Oh yum yum! Daddy's drive, a nice new Volvo flat loader. Back the Honda up the ramps and...

The man carries dozers and diggers and stuff, of cause my Dad's Honda'll fit...just drive straight ahead and think happy thoughts...

I've paced it out, I'm sure it'll fit, but that deck doesn't look very big even so. This is silly, I'm less than a meter up and I feel like I'm on stilts, harden up!

Tahdah!

I was all set to buy a bunch of rope, but no, good egg that he is, Horse Truck Dad came to the party with 4 large ratchet tie downs and in less time that it takes to tell, Honda was hog tied to Isuzu. Hope they get on. I offered to courier the tie downs back, but no, they were a present. Thanks! Nice guy.

I figured the Honda for a bit over half of the Isuzu's max loading, so no strain there, certainly it didn't feel funny once we were under way. I could see what the daughter was on about, though, no land speed records here. Patience and spacing the 5 gears eventually resulted in a comfortable 85-95kph, unless there was a hill. For a 3.3 liter diesel it seemed pretty relaxed about the whole affair. Still. Go it did, and in adequate comfort and handling. Not as loud as some I've driven, a conversation with the passenger is easily possible but I dont think I'll be fitting a stereo anytime soon. There is one, an A.M only radio in the dashboard hooked up to a single speaker someplace buried. OK when you're parked or in traffic. The thought didn't escape me that the Transit was easily as fast and a lot nicer to drive, But that's ok, all in all apart from the slightly hunched seat it's a running thing. A couple of hours later the hunched seat thing started to really piss me off. I was sure the seat was as far back as it would go, or at least that's what I thought. A tug on the seat slider and the seat lurched back another 6 inches, oh better! A grope and pull on the back rest adjuster and I had optimum driving configuration, yeehah! Now why didn't I do that right at the beginning...

Leisurely pace not withstanding, the trip home was nicely uneventful. Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to get the car off the back of the truck once we got home. Hmmm. Just as we drove into Shannon I vaguely recalled seeing a loading ramp in the rail yard near home. A quick investigate and success!

Job done! Home was a 2 minute drive away and all had gone swimmingly! I like the truck, it's easy to drive (idiosyncratic gearbox not withstanding. Gear changes need to be lined up with some care if you don't want to be left hanging in the middle of an intersection in Wanganui, eek!), all in all I think might have got lucky! Time to start thinking about the swap over.

A musical interlude.

It's been a long month, the truck rust thing was weighing on my mind, TradeMe lists were scrutinized  and deliberated over and over. Time for a break.

 I've been going to Sanctuary Sounds Music festival near Waipawa  in Hawkes Bay for the last couple of years, a pleasant little event on a lifestyle farm. They keep ticket numbers to 300 per year, a cunning move in my opinion. I was itching to take M-B but alas...so I tossed some camping gear into the folk's station wagon and kicked off. The drive was nice in early summer sunshine, a couple of hours and I was there. Flash my ticket at the gate and park under some trees. It was only just lunch time, still lots of camp sites, so I grabbed the tent and headed off to get me some real estate.

This looks good! The tent is a milsurp item from the NZ army. No flyleaf or floor and many peg loops and guy ropes as well as neat lil 5 piece ali poles. Quite sturdy and in one of my favorite camos schemes. Once the tent was up I just spread a tarp inside and tossed my therm-a-rest on top, home! It's a good size inside, 3 blokes and all their junk easily. It has a tape running from end to end, so stretching  it into shape is quite safe. Well made!

Tentage achieved, it was time to wander off. A very short stroll brought me to the stage area.

This is the porch/stage at the back of the owner's house with people standing around on his lawn. I'm leaning against the sound booth at the back of the lawn. The quality of the sound is very fair, good gear and a competent sound guy made for good balanced sound. Things were looking good for a noisy night :-)

In one of those cosmic coincidences, I bumped into the chap to whom I sold my furniture truck about 3 years ago. Interesting bloke by the name of Gypsy, he used to own the Shannon second hand store, a place my Mum loved to go to buy books and knicnacs as well as talking up a storm.
It was just a bare luton box body sitting on a Mitsubishi L300. I loved driving that truck, it's lil 1600cc Lancer petrol motor buzzing away at a sedate 85 kph. Sadly tho, the whole deal was a bit ruined by my not being able to stand up straight in the box. I thought about lifting the roof, but sheesh! Too hard for just 4 inches and would look top heavy anyhow. So, that never happened, the truck was sold and I got a Nissan Sentra instead.

Fast forward 3 years.

He's done a solid job of the conversion, not his first.

Very comfortable! Easily my favorite part was the neat lil wood burner stove Gypsy and a mate constructed especially. It's about the size of a shoe box on end and runs of pine cones and small bits. Very cool!

Even a trivet to cook on! I could sooo see something like this in M-B, might have to give that one some thought...nice lil truck.

The afternoon rolled on, the stage and the bar  both opened at 1pm and 1st acts go under way. The ladies singing acapella and being served tequila shots as they sang, funny stuff as they got the 4th or 5th one down.

As the afternoon wore on, I thought I'd get the sleeping bag out of the car and put it in the tent all set for the night in case I was a bit the worse for wear. Got back to the tent and discovered my peace and quiet had turned in to suburbia.

Argh! There goes the neighborhood....oh well. Layed out my sleeping bag and headed back to the stage area.

Eventually got dark, the bands got louder, people drank, danced, hung out and a good time was had by all. As a family event there was a double handful of kids running about the place and having a good time, it's good to see that sort of thing. Even the couple of obvious drunks were well behaved and we partied into the night.


Eventually the stage closed at 1am, most people had quit for the night and it was no struggle to wander off to the tent, crawl into bed and just close my eyes and fade.
Wasn't boozed worth the mention, so work up in the morning feeling like a coffee would set me up to face the morning nicely. Wondered over to the coffee stand and discovered they were out of milk. Oh the horror! So pausing only to roll up the tent and load all my junk back in the car, I flounced off back home, stopping at the 1st coffee cart I came to. Another excellent weekend, would have been better if I had M-B, but there is always next year....