Down & Out

With this being my cherry popping post l thought I’d write about a lil incident that occurred on Friday evening.
On Friday we had planned to gap down the line and get amongst opening weekend at Whakapapa. After jump starting Sam Dows car and watching him disappear into the distance we finished loading ticka up and were ready to join the congestion that is Auckland’s motorway system. This of course is after a quick drive by of dirty bird and swinging by Juno’s house to tax some more tie downs and play with his new optimus prime mask.
Just after Mercer lurking in the fog and sticking out like a pair of dogs balls we spotted and all too familiar sight. The conversation in cab went something along the lines of this:
“Surely not”, “Nah that can’t be Sam Dow”, “he left like an hour before us”,” Maybe he stopped off to see wifey”, “maybe he stopped off at the botanical gardens?”
Like something out of a Fast and the Furious film I dropped several gears, doubled the clutch, activated the nitrous oxide system and caught up to the white elephant known as Roger. Sure enough hunched over the wheel there was Sam Dow, looking shocked and at the same time with a grin from ear to ear.
He then followed us to the BP where we pulled over to give him some head phones as his stereo had decided to stop working and listened to him insist that it was the traffic that caused him to take so long.

After a quick chin wagg we were on the road again with Sam Dow following us, but for how long?
Eventually after battling with fog resembling a Bob Marley concert we got to the Taumarunui turnoff. Sam was no where to be seen so we made the call to pull over and wait for him. Seven minutes, twenty nine seconds and a quick road side Melbourne shuffle/crip walk contest Sam Dow appeared around the corner. Now I don’t know if it was the fog inside or out but he almost drove right past us/into us (seriously I have no idea how he could miss Hagan dancing in the middle of the road), with a screech of brakes he managed to pull over. As if on cue a mixture of steam, smoke and bizarre noises started to erupt from Roger. After cutting the engine and analysing that the car was on Struggle Street we called the AA to come have a pep. Eventually the mechanic appeared and even bought his family along for the drive (not much excitement on a Friday night in Te Kuiti) to confirm that Sam had cooked Rogers head gasket. The only solution was to put a sweet rotary into it or fill up as many bottles of water as we could, turn the heaters on full and get Sam to drive as quickly as he could to poppa Dows in Taumaranui where he would leave the car and catch a ride with Kelvin to the hill the next day.

Rumour has it apparently Sam got it semi sussed and is probably still on his way to the Mount to get it fixed properly.


Sam Dow tried to cook a hangi in the bonnet.