The ex factor

Saw one of my exes in the street this morning. It's funny how we react to that. Some people, I'm sure, get angry; some get a chill; some, like me, find a slow nostalgic smile spreading across their face at the memory of good times shared in the dim and distant past. It's just good to know they're still out there, still doing alright. That they found someone else to care for them, even if you and they had to go their separate ways.

The ex in question was a '97 Subaru Impreza wagon. Grey import, green paint, two litre boxer four, no turbo but all-wheel-drive. Cost me about four grand on TradeMe, back when I was a postdoc. We had some good times. Snow, mud, flood, highways, byways, dirt tracks and firetrails. One night long ago, 3am, Colin McRae-ing up a steep farm track rendered near-impassable by a torrential thunderstorm, more sideways than forwards. Long story why and how we came to be there, which I won't go into, but we all got out and made it home to sleep in our own beds. Sold it, in the end, for three-something to a fella who was going to do it up (you what? There's nowt wrong with that thing lad) for a friend who was moving to town.

I WANT TO GO PLAY IN THE SNOW

It still lives. This makes me happy. As it does whenever I see my old Audi kicking around town. Or when we spotted our old Legacy 250T - which we'd traded in for disposal money basically - on a trailer being towed behind some grey nomads' camper-bus. Off to be part of someone else's adventures.

Near mist

And yes, it's juvenile and immature to buy shitty second hand Subarus and rag the shit out of them up muddy forestry trails and drive them too fast through water splashes. So now I've stopped doing that, and am doing it in a brand new X-Trail instead.

No, it's definitely a Nissan

Yes, I am a child.

Carn, you can ford that. It's barely ankle deep. Carn.

I blame the old man. When I was a kid, about the same age as my youngest, he had a 253 V8 Holden ute, and the road to the local national park beach went through a very large mud puddle. Which, apparently, could only be traversed (a) at speed and (b) while going WAAAHHOOOO.


Genetics, eh.

Always use Nissan Genuine Parts. Or, when their crappy little retaining tabs break after trying to cross too many alpine-fed watercourses, use Nissan Genuine Pink Pegs

The Doctor is OUT to Karcher the mud off the 4WD before the missus finds out.