When we took on the farm lease, we inherited Susie the Suzuki. She is a Suzuki Carry truck decked out with quad tyres, worth a thumping $836 on the books. I love her dearly. Mitch doesn’t share my sentiments. Unluckily for him, the taller Munro genes result in him being bent like a staple behind the wheel and whacking his knees on the dash. Not a concern for me. She is the ideal height for getting in and out of quickly and Charlie’s fishbox cot is the perfect fit for her passenger seat. She has a great heater, a nice low flat deck for carrying heavy items, and a handy loop of twine attached at the back for towing dead sheep. When winter hits and the old hilux starts losing traction in the paddocks, Susie comes into her own. She chews up the hills and spits them out. In short, she is a machine.
Unfortunately, for the last few months Susie has been running below par. Like me, she is not a morning person. She has developed an aversion to the cold and refuses to start. We have treated her to a plush new battery however she remains under the weather.
So at the end of every day, I park Susie at the top of a steep slope near the yards. The handbrake doesn’t work so she spends her nights in second gear. Our morning begins by traveling at pace down this slope, my foot hard on the clutch. Then an abrupt jolt as I release the clutch and her wee tractor tyres grip the shingle. I plant my foot and roar off on a loop of the paddock before heading to the house to collect Charlie. Quite the exhilarating start to each day. One time I failed to do the full loop of the paddock and she conked out at the bottom of the hill. I had to get Mitch to nudge me with the hilux until Susie was traveling fast enough for him to shunt us into life again. How embarrassing.
The alternative to the hill start method is to sit in the shed for 20 minutes each morning, turning the key over and over while Susie shudders and splutters and eventually trembles into some resemblance of life. I can highly recommend this approach if you suffer from low blood pressure and are looking to raise this. After trialing the shed start method a few weeks back, Mitch most unkindly suggested that the best thing would be ‘to drive that fuc*en hunk of junk off a cliff’. Since then, he has taken to calling Susie ‘The Little Truck that Couldn’t’. How rude.
In brighter news, we finally have some income for the year! Hallelujah. To celebrate, we’re really pushing the boat out and Susie’s off to the mechanics for an overhaul. In no time she’ll be charging around the farm in tip top condition and starting with one slick turn of the key.
Maybe I’ll miss the morning hill starts. Then again, maybe not.