The Piece of Shit: Notable Transportation in NZ

Because our hosts lived a good half hour away from their farm shed/organic chocolate factory, we were at the mercy of their cars twice a day, 3 days a week. The magnificent specifics of these vehicles are as follows:

1.)Our hostess' car had panels of different colors and looked quite like a botched face lift. The pulls on the handles were missing, so to open the sliding side doors, we had to basically pinch the tiny bit of remaining grip between 2 fingers and pull with all our might. Though station wagon sized, there was only one passenger seat, so 2 out of the 3 of the wwoofers generally laid down for a pretty comfy nap in the back on the ride home, nestled among boxes of chocolates on good days and bags of trash on the bad ones. Tragically, on one of the trash days, I was rudely awoken from a much deserved nap after a 9 hour day of factory work when a bag of rubbish fell directly onto my face, much to the rest of the car's delight.

2.)The aforementioned white van (see post #1), which also had just one other conventional seat as the back had been crafted as homemade camper. The other places to sit were a mini PortaPotty (Jessamyn's fave spot) and our host's wheelchair. This had a tendency to not only tip over with every turn, but, even with the wheels locked, would somehow manage to slide back and forth, unfailingly smashing into and breaking the ankles of whomever had the loo seat. Not helping matters was our host's amusement with our plight (during one ride, Jessamyn nearly had the contents of the toilet sloshed out all over her) and often the smoothness of the ride had to do with how benevolent he was feeling that particular day. The pleasure he was taking in our seatbelt-less, tossed-about-the-back-of-the-van-tragedy (in combination with his sinisterly silly laugh), necessitated serious hours of discussion about which comic villian he reminded us of. Her combination of Dr. Evil and the Count from Sesame St. is not quite perfect, but as close as we've come so far.

3.)The Piece of Shit was ironically, but somehow not surprisingly, the most luxurious car of all. With more than enough seats and functioning seatbelts to go around and no major missing pieces, I never quite caught what made this car the only one deserving of an actual (and disparaging) name. It was never (as I first understood it to be), "Man, we need to start looking for a new car, that thing's a piece of shit," but rather, "'Are you going in the van or the Piece of Shit to pick up groceries?' 'Well, the van's got more space, but the Piece of Shit needs petrol, so I guess I'll take it.'"

In current, but equally as harrowing news, I drove a backwards car on the left side of the road for the first time today! Although it was easier than I expected, if I'm going to get advanced about this, I'm going to need to stop turning on the windshield wipers every time I want to change lanes.