The little blue car.

Sean's parents live outside Palmerston North, today we went to visit. All the way along SH57 and onto Old West Road there was a little blue car behind me. It was a beautiful dark but bright blue and its number plate had three letters and the first was C. I felt warmly toward that car as it swam along between the fields at the same speed as me. It never crowded me, usually leaving 3 seconds between us, and my driving was validated by the way it seemed so happy doing the same. We only differed at the big Old West Road roadworks because I was comfortable going 30kmph like the car in front of me and the little blue car with its beautiful paint only wanted to go 20.

On our way home again, around about when we passed Massey, we got behind a little blue car. As far as one can tell at night it was the same one, its numberplate had a C in the same place, at the Old West Road roadworks it went 20 and we stayed behind it, calmly making the same choices, for hours. All the way to Wellington but when we turned off up our ramp it went on to the Terrace or the tunnel.

Some of the speed choices were pretty constrained tonight. State Highway 1 was stopped or very very slow just South of Levin. Under the impression most people would have got safely back from the holiday weekend by then, we had had dinner and bathed the kids at their grand-parents' and so we left just before 8pm. We feel pretty smug we'd done it that way because they were asleep even before we saw the (second?) little blue car, let alone the huge traffic jam. For a little while there we thought our two hour drive might get us home well after midnight.

Funny how context colours events: the children being asleep made the 10km long traffic jam seem inconsequential, when we finally started moving 30 kmph seemed quite efficient, and just tonight I was saying that I couldn't understand spending more than $10,000 on a car but now I want a pretty little blue one like that.

Good night little blue car, sleep well.