Johan is a very good driver. He is also a fan of Formula One racing.
Because I am lazy and like to day dream and stare at the passing scenery while in the car, Johan almost always drives when we go out together. That is to say I put myself voluntarily into the position of letting him drive.
We have two cars. One is a very upmarket but slightly middle-aged Citroen station wagon. It is Johan’s pride and joy, the third in a line of the same car in earlier models. He is a life long fan of Citroens, which is apparently a Dutch thing notwithstanding that it is a French marque. This is his car for life, meticulously maintained by Bishop’s garage, which is an inter-generational business that specialises in Citroens. Money, sometimes scarce, is always available for car maintenance.
Even so, if you saw Johan’s car on a regular non-red letter day, and if you dared to look inside it, you could be forgiven for assuming he lived in it and was a particularly careless housekeeper. You see it is a work vehicle, a dog carrier, a dead letter box, a water bottle transporter, a spare wardrobe, a tool box, and many other things as well. Not to mention the discarded McDonalds containers, since that particular fast food chain is Johan’s go-to for food on the run when I am not around. Before I get in the car he has to remove the dog bed from the passenger seat, clear the foot well of trash and water bottles, and hope I am not so picky as to demand anything more.
But that is not all. When he turns the engine on many interesting and disturbing things happen. For one thing, the car has hydraulic suspension that also allows him to load his work equipment more easily by lowering and raising the vehicle. So the car may go up or down, depending on how he has set it. Since the car is not that new, it does not have some factory – fittings and options that are more or less standard now. But Johan does not like to miss out. So the windscreen is festooned with add-ons. There is the practical and imminently useful rear camera. Of course there is a go-pro also for forward filming, although he has never figured out how this works. There is a bracket for the mobile. But most important, and definitely most annoying, is the speed detector and scanner that reacts not just to Police radar, but to every other vehicle with an RT device on the road with a loud and unsettling screeching noise. On the plus side, we never get a speeding ticket when we go out of town in Johan’s car, which is not the case when we take my car.
It is black, and since we own a property up a long metal road, it is often very dirty. Our neighbour, Terry, exploits this by engraving amusing comments and cartoons in the dust. But Johan has a special relationship with the RubaDub car wash in Manukau Road. Every so often, when we need to transport rather finicky people (my law firm partners for instance) the car goes in for a full valet and emerges immaculate. Any very smart indeed it looks. Oh, and it has a big motor and goes very fast.
My car is a near new BMW. Many of you will know that it has an unfortunate recent history. But now, with a brand new motor all the way from Germany and fitted by the local BMW agents, it is purring along as perfectly as you have a right to expect of an expensive German piece of machinery. My car is white, so I have to admit it gets a bit grubby on the outside, but otherwise it is clean and tidy and not the repository of junk. I do not have to cringe if a friend or colleague gets into my car for a ride. Nor does it have distracting extras fixed to the windscreen or make an annoying noise when it is switched on, or disturb your sense of equilibrium by lifting you up or down. It is nowhere near as interesting as Johan’s car, but it is convenient and practical, and also goes quite fast.
As I have said, Johan drives both cars, and he loves driving. His driving skills are, in a technical sense, very good indeed. He has great reactions, knows how to control the car in all situations, and is attentive to the road. BUT, he is a menace to other drivers and a terror to his passengers. You see Johan has two conflicting beliefs – one is that you should arrive at your destination in the shortest possible unit of time, and the other is that the shortest distance between any two points is not necessarily a straight line. The traffic that lies between him and his destination is his enemy, and each trip is an engagement in battle. He is the guy that drives all the way up the exit lane on the motorway and sneaks back into the mainstream at the very last moment. He NEVER pulls up at an intersection in the lane that indicates the turn he wants to make, because he can always get ahead of the traffic when it moves and sneak into that lane further up. Even if the queue of traffic is shorter in the correct lane, he will take the wrong one because it is not challenging enough otherwise.
If there are multiple lanes, like on the motorway, he will play favourites. He does not like to have cars immediately in front of him, so he will duck and dive lanes all the way. If the traffic comes to a halt, the ducking and diving becomes more, not less, intense. He uses certain vehicles as markers, and tries to pick the fastest lane in a traffic jam. He often loses at this game, but that never deters him. At peak hours our short trips around the city are an adventure. Despite having a highly suspect sense of direction he refuses to take the obvious routes in heavy traffic so that, for example, we recently travelled from Grey Lynn to Newmarket via Mt Eden. From the St Lukes mall last Friday he ignored the signalled entry directly onto St Lukes Rd (the direct route to our home) and took us on a comprehensive tour of all three levels of the carpark before emerging into the inevitable traffic jam on Morningside Drive and home via Kingsland.
On that particular trip, he also got caught out trying to be smart by a particular feature of my car. It has a default setting that switches the engine off when you are not moving, and switches it back on as soon as you lift you foot off the brake. But we (both slight acceleration freaks) have detected a slight lag in this process, so we switch it off whenever we remember. On this occasion though, Johan had forgotten to do so. So in order to beat the little green sewing machine next to us off the traffic lights, he stabbed at the button and inadvertently switched off the motor. Then he tried to start it again without putting it in Park. The car did not move. The little green sewing machine disappeared into the distance, and Johan swore.
He swears quite a lot when driving, even though he rarely does so when speaking outside the car. He curses everyone on the road, impugns their heritage, their intelligence and their driving ability – often for the very same things he does himself. Occasionally we get a letter from Police, often addressed to me because he has been driving my car. This means some outraged and offended fellow motorist has noted the licence number and reported him to the Police. But of course it is just a warning because there is no way to prove any offence has been committed. In fact, probably no offence has been committed, but Johan’s driving pattern has driven someone to complain vigorously. We never bother to respond, but I am not sure how many warnings my driver’s licence can take before I have to start defending myself.
Of course Johan does get the odd speeding ticket when he drives my non-radar proofed car. But that is hardly surprising for someone who thinks every car in front of him is a danger on the road. On the other hand, he has never had a crash with me in the car. I am not sure if that is good luck, or good management, or the intense degree of concentration I put in on his more excitable days to ensure we get where we are going in one piece. There are the times when I dare not take my eyes off the road for a second for fear of what will happen next, the tights gaps where I cover my eyes with my hands, and the overtaking maneuvers where I actually scream out loud. Johan is undeterred, and thus far unscathed.
But there are other days, where he wants to see the scenery and enjoy the sunshine. On such occasions we tootle along at 80 kph, and he will even pull over to let faster cars pass. We once travelled from Rotorua to almost to Auckland in this manner, but the onset of the southern motorway jolted him out of his reverie and back to the drive and conquer mode. I was almost relieved. I fear he is only really concentrating when using the car as a weapon.
Admission – I love it when Johan drives.