On Monday morning one of my flatmates dashed into my room looking gleefully excited.
"Zabinsky!" she cried. "Are you free on Tuesday and Wednesday? Do you want to go on a mini road trip up to Paihia? All expenses paid?"
I contemplated the question for perhaps three seconds. "Sure," I replied. "Why?"
"We want to take our parents to a place that isn't in Auckland," she explained - my flatmates' parents were visiting from India - "and we need you to drive us."
"Ahhhhh," I said, understanding. In a strange quirk of bureaucracy, both my flatmates (hereafter abbreviated as F1 and F2), have their full international driver's licenses and even own a dysfunctional car. However, neither of them can actually drive. I own I car. A very large car. I call him Magnus. I even know how to drive him. Consequently, my skills as chauffeur are in great demand, to the extent that people are willing to pay for me to accompany them on holiday.
F2 quickly raced off to start planning the trip, booking accommodation, etc. I too began to prepare. I completed a task so gargantuan, so unbelievably huge it would strike awe into the hearts of mammoths. A task none could have foreseen me ever doing.
I cleared out my car.
The collection of energy drink cans; the fast food wrappings; the motley array of shoes; the surprisingly large quantities of pens; old uni assignments; year-old payslips; the occasional hair tie; the sewing machine; the shovel. All were ruthlessly removed from Magnus and dumped in a haphazard pile on my living room floor.
This was not the extent of the attention I paid to my car. At 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday I struggled out of bed, coffee in hand, and checked the oil level in the car.
And a couple of hours later, after we had set out on our epic journey, we pulled into a gas station where Magnus received a full tank of fuel and even a tire pressure check. Magnus had never been pampered so much in his life.
Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps Magnus, filled with the glory that loving attention brings, morphed into a spoiled brat of a car. The one thing - the one thing! - I had neglected to check quite literally blew up in my face.
We were about twenty minutes away from Whangarei. It had been a perfect trip. The traffic was light. The sky was blue. I hadn't had to swear at many bad drivers. We drove along in a haze of bliss; F1 even dozed off and began to snore like a very special cricket.
Suddenly, a faint whine not of human origin began to reverberate through the car and I caught a faint whiff of a disgusting smell - my car had overheated.
I was not greatly alarmed. Magnus has always been somewhat temperamental, but I've found that if you treat him with patience and understanding he'll usually respond well enough. He'd had a glitchy fuel injector for at least a year and in all that time had only once broken down and refused to start up again. I'd had him towed to a mechanic who told me it would cost a couple of thousand dollars to fix. My dad laughed, paid the mechanic $100 for his time, towed Magnus home, and had him working again in about ten minutes. Compared to that, overheating was nothing, a minor thing every vehicle went through.
The radiator was steaming slightly, but still, I was not worried. I kept a large bottle of water in my boot for just such an emergency. I decided to be sensible and wait for the motor to cool down a little bit before pouring more water into it. I waited paitiently for the radiator to cease steaming, after which I cautiously tapped the lid to check the temperature. It was still fairly warm, and the lid had the words NEVER OPEN WHEN HOT emblazoned on it, but I figured that was probably due to some lawyer trying to save his company's arse in case some minor disaster occured. It's like how a pen drive always warns you to SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE BEFORE EJECTING, even though nothing terrible has ever happened from merely tugging it out of the USB socket.
So I shrugged, borrowed a hanky, and used it to protect my hand while I undid the radiator lid.
And discovered that a car is nothing like a computer.
Scalding, foul-smelling brown liquid gushed out, catching me right in the chest. I yelped and leaped back, heart hammering, adrenaline rushing through my veins. A long, agonising moment passed by while I waited for my nervous system to kick in and tell me just how hot the water was, and whether I was seriously burnt, and would I have to go to hospital, and whether the Flatmates and their parents would be able to get home without me, and just how much reconstructive surgery would I need, anyway?
I became dimly aware of a babble of voices anxiously asking whether I was alright. That alone told me that I didn't feel any pain. Hot, yes, and dirty, and quite shocked, but I definitely didn't resemble a half-melted waxwork.
"Yes, I'm fine, I'm quite fine," I said calmly, assuming my Everything Is Perfectly Alright voice that I use whenever people are worried about me (which occurs surprisingly often, though I do not understand why, for I am the epitome of competence).
Everyone agreed that it would probably be best to wait ten minutes before trying to add more water. In the meantime I serenely used the hanky to wipe most of the disgusting water off me.
The water replaced, we hopped back in the car and continued on our way, my shaking hands clutching the steering wheel for support.
We got a few kilometres down the road before Magnus overheated again. I was perturbed, but I figured the motor still hadn't cooled down enough and was feeling crotchety. We pulled into a roadside cafe and had a coffee while we waited for Magnus to calm down.
After that, we set off again and managed to reach Paihia without incident.
We spent a lovely afternoon on a boat that took us on a tour of the Bay of Islands. We saw a couple of dolphins and a lot of islands. We had delicious Indian food at a restaurant and spent the night in a cute little cottage. It was a lovely experience that completely justified the angst in getting there.
Even the snoring that resounded through the cottage could be tolerated, I decided, though the resulting lack of sleep made me feel quite haggard in the morning. One coffee later, though, and we were on our way to the next stage of our trip: Cape Reinga.
The trip was mostly uneventful, though we had a brief stop at Cooper's Beach to swim and another stop in Kaitaia for lunch. I coerced F1 into buying me an iced coffee to give me extra energy oomph.
Magnus seemed to be a tad grumpy on the journey north. His injector pump problem was flaring up again and he was revving wildly. He struggled slowly up hills and took a while to speed up again on the flats. I pushed him as hard as I dared, glancing anxiously up at the late afternoon sky that was slowly turning from cotton wool to dark concrete. Finally, it happened: Magnus overheated just as we pulled into the Cape Reinga carpark.
There was nothing we could do about it, for as soon as we stepped out of the car, the sky turned into an upright pond. Rain raged down in an unforgiving deluge while its accomplice, the Wind, howled like a furious banshee. We leaped back into the car, damp and frozen in our summery beach clothes, and I quietly began to worry. What if the rain kept up for hours? What if we weren't able to put water in the car? Would I be able to drive most of the way home in the dark and the rain without killing us all? What if putting more water in didn't help? What if there was something terribly wrong with Magnus? What if we couldn't get back to Auckland? Would a mechanic in Kaitaia still be open after 6:00 p.m.? Would we even be able to reach Kaitaia?
Luckily, a meteorological miracle happened: ten minutes passed by and the sky was suddenly blue once more. We were able to wander down to the lighthouse and marvel at the scenery while we waited for Magnus to cool down.
On returning to the car, however, my worries began to return. There was more than enough water in the radiator, which suggested something was terribly, horribly wrong.
There was nothing for it but to attempt the drive home. Magnus strained my nerves to breaking point. He was revving more erratically than ever. The temperature gauge constantly hovered somewhere between the "hot" and "halfway" points, though it never completely overheated. I nursed him gently over hills, trying not to strain him too much.
We drove for two hours. We got all the way to Kaitaia. We drove another twenty minutes. Everything seemed fine - or at least manageable. Until we reached a mountain.
And Magnus died.
He overheated on a particularly steep and windy stretch of road. And then he simply... stopped. The engine switched off and we coasted to the side of the road.
I turned the hazard lights on and tried not to show how panicked I was. Night was setting in. We were hours from home and stuck on the side of the road in a car that didn't work. If I had been by myself I would have shrugged, figured everything would be better in the morning, and spent the night in my car, as I have done before. But there were four other people in the car, at least one of whom snored. It would have been impossible.
I was shaking like a madwoman and I didn't know what to do.
