AS I drive towards Masterton for the Sunday shift, I find myself in a surprisingly long tail-end of cars. I'm not the Charlie on the end for long; Wairarapa drivers, used to a 100km/h cruise between the towns on SH2, start building up behind me.
The cause is a vehicle moving at a steady 75km/h. My only thought is, dude, are you trying to get someone killed?
Naturally I'm all for playing it safe and arriving in one piece, but Wairarapa has glorious open roads, and the novelty of someone not making the most of the speed limit in our neighbourhood is disconcerting.
Over the next few days, we will undoubtedly have the difficulty of enduring holidaymakers from Wellington, working their way steadily towards Napier, or Mahia, or Gisborne, or whatever. It is likely we'll have those from Khandallah or Churton Park, probably still a bit queezy from the Rimutaka Hill Rd, saying: "Oh, look at the mountains (or cows, or sheep, or tractors, or baleage) and forget to pay attention to their speed and the road in general.
I will freely admit the closest I've come to killing myself is in Wairarapa, on that accursed corner near Ponatahi, because I was looking at a giant derelict house on the skyline. It's dangerously easy to do.