We have our own wheels, at last! Yesterday we went on the hunt for a decent second-hand car. Our first, and as it turned out only, stop was at a place within walking distance from the cashel St flat, called $5k Corner. All the cars were $5k and under, which was perfect for our budget! After looking over the contenders, and making a difficult choice between three different saloons, we ended up selecting a 1994 Honda Rafaga (henceforth to be known as The Beast) with about 150,000km on the clock, which was on sale at $4490 when we arrived at the showroom, and eventually sold to us for $3990. I've never heard of that particular model, but it's a large saloon with a 2 litre engine, automatic gears, and tons of boot space - perfect for touring around and driving up twisty mountain roads! The only thing that didn't meet our list of requirements was the colour. We had wanted a silver car because that's the best option for not showing dirt, but ended up with a stylish navy blue instead. Oh well.
We were also very impressed with the salesman. He was pretty chuffed to have made a sale - he told us afterwards that he was going through a dry patch and hadn't sold anything for three weeks - but he was very good to us. We had to go and get money after we agreed to buy the car, and headed off on foot, and he chased after us and offered to loan us his own little car until we had gathered up enough cash to pay for the new one. He also chased after us once the deal had been done, to return an extra $10 that we had paid by mistake. We would never have noticed, so that was pretty cool.
Getting enough money to pay for the car was a bit of a trial. Without any money in our NZ bank account, we have to withdraw money from the ATM every day, and the maximum for any one 24 hour period is $700. Luckily Skry and I both have cards for our joint account, and he was able to withdraw money from his personal account too, so it only took us two days to gather up all the cash for the car. The salesman was a bit taken aback to be presented with a huge pile of twenties, I think! But he got it all counted up in the end and the car was ours. It only took me about 30 seconds to have another driver beeping their horn at me, because just after pulling out of the garage I forgot that I was driving an automatic and attempted to change gear, resulting in the car stopping dead in the middle of the road (I mistook the brake for a non-existent clutch), but luckily no harm was done and I learned a valuable lesson, which was to keep my left leg tucked back under the seat from now on!
Oh, and yes, that is rain on the car. It wasn't raining today, but it was raining tomorrow when I wrote this blog entry, and also the day after tomorrow when I posted it. Today was actually really hot and sticky.
Today was an absolute scorcher - 33c according to the news, and it certainly felt that hot. Lou was at work, so Skry, Phil and I took a stroll into town. The guys were doing their own thing, and I headed to Cathedral Square, where there was a Firefighter Combat Challenge event going on. "The toughest 2 minutes in sport", according to the t-shirts that I saw here and there. I don't know if this is a common event or something that everyone else is familiar with, but I'd never heard of it before anyway. In this sweltering heat, relay teams of uniformed firemen were dragging hoses up flights of stairs, hauling weights up to the top, hammering things, running with hoses around obstacle courses, and dragging dummies hither and yon. I don't know how they could bear it in that heat, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway.
