Moon over Martinborough

If I was going to live in paradise, I had to be able to drive there.

Rimutaka Hill Road

So it was that on a Saturday afternoon in September of 2006, I sat behind the wheel of our little Nissan Pulsar and drove toward the Rimutaka mountain range. Rick sat in the passenger seat as official navigator and voice of reason.

I’ve already told you how terrible the Rimutaka Hill Road is. Even Kiwis, who seem to downplay everything, admit that the road is less than ideal. Of course the locals will tell you that it’s better than it used to be, back when they were kids.  It must have been a goat track.

Starting the ascent

There was a misty rain as I drove into the foothills. We came to the sign that announces whether or not the road is open that day. Unfortunately it was.

The first incline is steep, and that’s where our little Nissan always begins to struggle. You can floor it and the car just putts along. But there’s a passing lane there, and the more powerful cars passed us by that day. Then suddenly the side of the road disappeared to my left, and the drop-offs and hairpin turns began.

Here is my confession. When it comes to a mountain road, I’m a nana behind the wheel. You wouldn’t know it to talk to me. I seem confident. I’m a reasonably smart and together person. But give me a mountain road and a steering wheel, and all my childhood fears of high places come rushing back into my throat.

I learned to drive on the long, straight, perfectly flat roads of Michigan, not these turny, curvey deathtraps.

It didn’t take long before there was a big red ute directly behind me, riding my tail. (A ‘ute’ is a pick up truck, for all you non-Kiwis. The word comes from ‘utility vehicle’ I’m told.)

I kept glancing into the rearview mirror.

“You’re fine,” Rick said. “Just go at your own pace.” Of the two of us, I’m usually the more calm. But when it matters most he can muster up the deepest peace. He’s good that way.

The locals follow too close on the Rimutaka Hill Road. They grew up with it, know it well. They always want to go fast. But tailgating doesn’t make a nana go faster. It just makes that nana all the more nervous. That’s when accidents happen.

Soon the big red ute was joined by a sedan directly behind it, and then another car showed up behind that. I felt like the leader of Retarded Nana’s Slow Parade.

I wanted to go faster, but I was afraid. I was approaching the worst part of the road – a part so bad that it has a special name of its own.

Muldoon’s Corner

The worst turn on the Rimutaka Hill Road is named ‘Muldoon’s Corner’ after former NZ Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, because it’s ‘tight and to the right.’ (Muldoon, who was also Finance Minister, was known for his extremely tight budgets.)

Curve on the road

Muldoon’s Corner is so narrow that large trucks have to cross the center line, and if two trucks approach in opposite directions, one has to back up for the other to pass. Those reversing trucks, combined with a steep drop off, lack of any substantial fence, the extreme blind turn – oh, and did I mention the high winds? – make Muldoon’s Corner especially dangerous for everyone.

Local politicians have been advocating for improvements to Muldoon’s Corner for years now. Recently the Government announced they were moving forward a 20 million dollar upgrade on the Rimutaka Hill Road, taking the bend out of that corner. I can’t wait for that work to happen.

But on that day I was approaching Muldoon’s Corner in all its unstraightened glory. I prayed for no oncoming trucks.

Coming across a truck at any point on the Rimutaka Hill Road is terrible. One time a trailer truck transporting cereal tipped over up there, spilling corn flakes everywhere and closing the road for six hours. The local paper called it a ‘cereal cliffhanger‘.

Even before I’d made it all the way up to Muldoon’s Corner, I laid eyes on my worst fear. Suddenly there it was, barreling towards me: a huge truck.

But this truck wasn’t carrying cereal. It was some kind of tanker, and it clearly contained something flammable. What more could the gods throw at me? Earthquakes? Thunderstorms? A plague of locusts to cover my windshield?

“You’re okay,” Rick said, sitting in the passenger seat beside me. He must have felt me cringe.

I didn’t care what he said. The truck was obviously far too wide to stay on its side of the road. Any idiot could see we were about to die in a great, all-consuming fireball. Just a few feet away on my left was yet another treacherous drop-off into the bush. I was most definitely NOT okay.

I watched the center line. My heart beat violently. My mouth went dry.

Turning around at that point was not an option. There was no place to pull over. Getting Rick to take the wheel would have been impossible.

Looking back now, I suppose I could have allowed my fear to define me. I could have – even before getting on that stupid road – allowed my fear to make the decision for me. I could have said, “I’m never living in paradise because I cannot drive the road to get there, and I will not try.”

But somehow I never even considered that. I’d fallen in love with those olive trees, with that beautiful property, and there was absolutely no way I was going to let a little road stop me.

I continued to drive forward – carefully, slowly, watching the truck ahead of me, aware of the abyss beside me, the cars close behind me, but I continued to drive.

And you know what? The truck passed me by. It did not explode into a fireball beside me. It did not cause me to careen down the bank and into the tangled bush.

In fact, as it went by I realized the truck wasn’t a carrying flammable liquid at all. It was a milk truck. Milk! I laughed at myself. If it had collided with a cereal truck, we would have had breakfast enough to feed all of Wellington.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a passing lane opened up, and all the cars that had been accumulating behind me up to that point finally zoomed past.

So when it came time to go around Muldoon’s Corner, I was thankfully no longer so nervous for holding people up, and although the vertical drop-off was waaaay too close and there was absolutely noooo shoulder, I made it around without a hitch. That does not mean I was not terrified.

When I finally made it down off that mountain and was cradled in the Wairarapa valley, I was deeply relieved. A light rain was falling. I thought the worst part of the drive was over, but I was wrong. I turned off the main road at Featherston and headed towards Martinborough.

The S-shaped bridge

About 5 minutes outside of Featherston, we came to the small S-shaped bridge which spans the Tauherenikau River. Technically the bridge itself is straight and the road curves just before and after it. To this day I don’t know exactly what happened as I crossed that bridge, I only know it all went wrong.

When I saw the sign for the reduced speed limit around those curves, I slowed down. And when I came out of the last curve, I lost control of the car.

I haven’t driven on ice since living in Michigan, over 16 years ago now, and although there was no ice on the road that day, immediately I recognized the feeling. There was no longer any relationship between the direction I turned the wheel and the direction of the car.

Of course, it was spring in New Zealand on a lowland road. There was no ice.

I suppose it could have been ‘black frost‘ on the bridge – a thin sheet of frost without the white color.  Or perhaps the light mist falling had brought all traces of oil and gas to the surface of the road, making it slick. One friend told me that boy racers – as young speedsters are called in New Zealand – sometimes pour diesel fuel on the road to make their tires spin and smoke. But I can’t imagine they’d do that on a narrow bridge. Who knows. Maybe.

It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that when I hit the brakes it was like pushing on a sponge, and when I turned the wheel the car did not respond.

I began pumping the breaks, as I’d learned to do on Michigan ice. I quickly checked the rearview mirror to make sure nobody was coming up behind me. A green station wagon was coming around the corner off the bridge, some distance back, and it was doing fishtails. The bridge was definitely slick.

It was then that our little Nissan Pulsar started spinning. We were suddenly travelling sideways down the road, straddling both lanes. If somebody had been in the oncoming lane at that moment, it would have been awful.

I managed to turn the nose of the car back towards the road. A blue van slowed down in front of us. It was in the oncoming lane but at a safe distance. It pulled to the side of the road, watching us, out of our way.

All of a sudden the nose of the Nissan spun in the other direction, and we then began sliding off the road. I continued pumping the breaks furiously as we headed towards a fence. On the other side, cattle were grazing in a large green paddock.

A large, thick fence post stuck up out of the ground like a tree trunk in front of us. We were headed directly towards it.

I watched helpless, unable to steer, still pumping the breaks, as we went into a small ditch, up the other side and then – lightly, ever so lightly – kissed that fence post with the nose of the car.

The station wagon behind me had come to a stop. The road was empty. The blue van was still watching.

I asked Rick if he was okay.

“I’m fine,” he said.  You?”

“Fine.”

Stunned, I backed up, saw there was no damage to the fence at all, and began to drive on. As we passed the blue van, I gave a thumbs up. The guy in the driver’s seat was staring at the nose of our car.

I pulled to the side of the road to look. There, in middle of the front grill, was a large V-shaped dent. It was bad enough to look terrible, but so not bad as to have damaged the engine. We were lucky. We were both okay. The car, although a bit squished, drove fine.

“Do you want me to drive the rest of the way?” Rick asked.

“Hell no,” I said.

I was not going to quit then. I’d made it over the Rimutaka Hill Road, dealt with tailgaters, drop-offs, and oncoming trucks of rare flammable milk, and then finally a booby-trapped bridge. I was going to drive all the way to those damn olive trees and that beautiful property if it was the last thing I did.

I got back in the car and drove. The roads were easy from there, and the way was calm. When we finally arrived at the property, which I was by then absolutely determined we were going to buy, I practically jumped out of the car and kissed the ground. I felt like I was home.

–

Read the next post: Testing the train to paradise.

Read other posts about the Rimutaka Hill Road.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Commute, New Zealand, Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.