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Here's a little known story about me. I used to live in New Zealand. Specifically in a little sleepy seaside town called Motueka. We even had our own "resort", a beach side caravan park at Kaiteriteri beach. There was a general store, petrol station, boat wash, bait and ice, tea rooms and fish and chip and ice cream counters. I worked there three summers in a row. I actually had a full time job but I used to work there while on my paid vacation. It helped defray the costs of the holiday - petrol money travel, food and drink etc.

I don't even remember exactly which year this was, but it would have been somewhere between 1988 and 1993. At the time I owned a Hillman Avenger. In fact I purchased it explicitly for the holiday - I think I swapped $700 for it. It was a bit of a scrubber, but it went ok.

Well Christmas Eve I worked at the shop - cooking fish and chips. I think from memory i did a 4 hour shift. I left to drive to my grandparents place about 50 kms away late afternoon. I was going to be there for christmas day, though I had a shift christmas day afternoon and again on boxing day. On the way I decided to take a long cut via a gravel road that rankind of parallel to the mainr oad, but it was more fun - hint I was into rallying back then and fancied myself as a bit of a gravel drifter and liked trying the scandanavian flick whenever possible.

Anyway I was haring along this low use gravel road when around a corner in front of me a ute appeared, fully drifting across the entire road. I was heading straight toward him and as he was still crossed up in full opposite lock I figured I was going to collect his rear end. Only thing for it. At the last second I wrenched my wheel to the left and drove into the bank. I hit it with my front wheel with a tremendous bang and it flipped the car up onto two wheels. I clearly remember seeing the road through the side of the windscreen. I travelled that way for a few seconds before banging back down onto all 4 wheels again. In the meantine the sliding ute had fishtailed past me in a cloud of dust. I came to a stop and got out to inspect the damage. Nothing broken, but I had bent the subchassis front arm that the wheel attaches to. This meant that the front left wheel now faced left when the right one was facing straight. Maybe only by 5 or 10 degrees, but enough to drastically affect the steering. In fact I soon discovered i could go around left hand corners by letting go of the steering wheel!

I continued on to my grandparents and enjoyed the evening and christmas morning with them. In the afternoon I had to drive back to the resort. In fact I ended up driving over 200kms before I could get to a workshop on the day after boxing day when they re-opened.

There are more stories I can tell about that holiday, but that is all for now.