Remember the days of building your own trolley and racing it around the streets? Photo / File
Two months back I could have attached the nameplate "Tardis" to the car as it had taken me back in time.
To a time when after school meant finding something to do.
I was driving home and spotted some kids who had clearly reached a time in their afternoon or weekend lives where they had decided to find something to do. So they had built a trolley.
It was the most wonderfully basic creation - the sort of thing the hands of 10 or 11-year-olds would build without structural or mechanical intervention from the old man. A wooden box perched upon a slab of wood which had a plank extending out the front.
The front steering axle was a shorter length of planking loosely (so it could steer) bolted to the main plank. The power steering system was made up of two ropes attached to the outer edges of the steering axle.
The front wheels were spoked - as if from an old pushchair while the rear jobs were solid, like the ones on a motor mower.
One kid was pushing it and the other was driving it, and it appeared to have a stability problem as well as some wicked understeer.
Not that they cared as they careered along the footpath hooting and howling the way kids do when they sense something is about to go terribly wrong at any moment.
They wore grins as wide as mine as I watched them endanger every passing letterbox.
Trolleys, or karts, were almost a rite of passage when I was a kid, way back when television aerials looked like aerials.
For some strange reason pretty well every house in the neighbourhood had an old discarded pram in the back shed so wheels were never a problem.
Timber was easy to find, although the kid we vaguely knew a couple of blocks over who used a paling from the neighbour's fence for the steering axle spar sort of soiled in his creative nest.
We were lucky at home because we had a sloping pathway from the footpath down to the back of the section which meant immediate propulsion if one's siblings were not around.
Yes, there was damage to shrubs and there was blood on occasions, but we were like miniature (albeit far less technically gifted) versions of Burt Munro as we sought to modify and tweak our trolley in the quest for more pace.
And we painted the thing ... badly.
There were plenty across the wider neighbourhood although I can't recall ever taking another one on for a race, as that meant pushing one's engine (the kid pushing you) to the oxygen-sapping limit.
They were just there to simply muck around on.
Wielding a hammer and a spanner and using a measuring tape to get the planking pieces even was all part of the hands-on learning thing. Sadly, it did me little good through the years as I have struck more fingers and thumbs than nails over the course of clumsily repairing something or building book cases devoid of right angles. But oh the fun of small fast wheels.
So to those kids I spotted recently, good on you ... one day you'll maybe even race it in the great Trolley GP of Auckland.
I watched coverage of this remarkable event last year and was astounded at the imagination and creativity of the teams who took part.
They are the wheeled equivalents of the flying festival machines which annually take off from one of the Wellington wharves, and you have to marvel at the sophistication.
Check this out - you will smile a lot.
And you may even wander out later to see if there are any old pram wheels in the shed out the back.
Motorsport - Trolley GP, TV3 at 3.10pm Sunday:
For the world of trolleying the Auckland Domain is like Monaco. Sweeping, curving public roads just perfect for testing the skills of the drivers and equally perfect in terms of roadside viewing spots for spectators. This draws a big crowd who turn out to gasp, applaud and pay tribute to the often bizarre creations built upon wheels. You reckon the best character designs emerge at the Wellington Sevens? No way, take a squizz at this lot.