1-16-12
Oamaru to North Island

It was a beautiful morning and I headed north. I stopped in at a little rest area along the highway to use the facilities and found these neat old cars there for the same reason. It turns out that they are headed to a huge classic car rally on the north island.

1937 Nash

1941 Cadillac. He has the steering wheel on the Left which is allowed down here if the car is fifteen years old at least. 

Traveling along I crossed lots of these wide shallow rivers. You might remember from last year I found out that Jet boats were invented here for this reason.

I stopped in to see if my friend Jody was home but he is working up near Auckland his wife said. She took me down to the new garage that they built and showed me the 1956 pickup that they had just bought. She said they paid $50K for it but was told that it was worth an easy $80K… Yikes!!

They had added on this porch and opened up the living room and bedroom with French doors. It sure made a wonderful openness to the house for sure.

I was charging along in a super wind event and came to this little town, actually a wide spot in the road and see it must have gotten its name for this same wind.

The price of gas/petrol and diesel. I understand that they charge the diesel folks $400 for some reason as well as they have to pay taxes on the number of miles that they drive in a year. I think they must be paying about $6 a US gallon for the gas and I see all the time people bitching about it. It is $2.119 for regular. They dont have pennies or nickels here so they round it off to the nearest dime when you pay. I wonder if the US will get rid of the cents and nickels soon as it cost more to make the darn things than they are worth. 

Here is a carrot field that is being grown for seed. I used to grow my own carrot seed but only maybe twenty or thirty plants. This is going to be a huge seed crop and carrot seed sells for big bucks. This might be enough seed for all of New Zealand. The unfortunate thing is that in the foreground you might be able to see some Queen Ann’s Lace weeds. They cross pollinate with carrots and make an inedible carrot. I guess MOST of his seed will be ok and not interested in bad seed as it will be such a small percentage. If you have grown carrots and had a few bad ones, this is the reason. I was lucky in that there was NO Qeen Ann’s Lace growing in or near my farm in Nevada.

Nice heavy crop of Oats that has had the straw baled up right behind the combine.

It has been dry and some of the farmers that have irrigation are pumping the water for their fields.

I got the news that there was a bike rally in a little town but when I got there after meeting about a hundred bikes going the other way, there were only a few left.

I met this guy and his 1974 Harley. These bike guys down here are sure nice, even the Harley boyz. There were a lot of different kinds of bikes at this rally and that seems to be the way these guys do it. I like a good cross section of bikes as it sure seems more friendly than just one type.

These little back roads are just fantastic. There is almost no traffic and every bend in the road is a photo op.

Ah, stopped at this turnout and met these nice two couples. This Summit was built in Australia from mostly parts that were imported from the US.

There were very few of these ever built and they had a real unique suspension system that was made for rough roads. 

Some of that heavy Detroit iron here.

An onion field that is drip irrigated.

When I got to the ferry to take me over to the North Island I met these folks. I should have gotten a side view of this Alvis as it was sure a beautiful car with a boat tail or maybe a speedster tail on it. The whole body is aluminum and had made. 

This is just like my first car. It is a 1929 Model A Roadster pickup. He said that they were built in Canada for NZ and they put the steering wheel on the right which makes it really difficult for the carburetor and exhaust plumbing.

This is sure a cool Packard. The guy found it in a garage and spent six years bringing it back to life. He has yet to complete the interior but said he gave the guy that he bought it from a ride. The old guy was the original owner and is now 91. He said they only exported around 200 of the coups with the steering on the right side and evidently this is the only one that still is living. This is the first outing with the car as he just got it running last week, just in time for the rally.

I like how they do the truck hook up so different than we do.

There are two ferries to get to Wellington and this is the small one and is a little cheaper to use.

This is like the one I am on and it is a lot bigger and if the water is rough, much nicer to get over the water on. It cost about ten bucks more to use the big boat.

This is the urinal on the big boat and you can see by the handy handles that even with the big boat, when the sea is rough, it is nice to hang on with one hand while busy with the other one.

on the loaded deck.

The traffic was hell getting out of Wellington and I finally made it up to Levin when the traffic finally thinned out a little and found a room for the night. I took a walk and found this flower display outside the info center. They sure like their flowers for town display down here.

 Be warned: THERE ARE GOING TO BE A LOT OF OLD CAR PHOTOS SOON..... I  think there are supposed to be almost 700 cars that are coming to the rally. I should be up there tomorrow for a look around. I bought some batteries so.......