Time and tide wait for no man. Forty years in waiting, four months in preparation and 1260km in road rubber, and my father, Peter Cape is laid to rest in an historic church cemetery 10km from where he was born in Helensville in 1926.
So the cycle of life turns, we
can move on.
If one watches one can see patterns. If one has faith in a creator or knowledge of design one can see the hand of a master chessplayer or draughtsman at work. Call it synchronicity if you like. I will.
The event was well received, enjoyed: a send off satisfyingly completed and recognised by the media.
I'd visited BP in Dannevirke on the Friday night before leaving for Helensville. I asked the highway police officer getting petrol about conditions on the Napier-Taupo route. He obliged, radioed ahead and reported all was good. As we parted he mentioned that they were targeting speed. I said I hoped I never had to meet him professionally. Heading north the next day I must have driven through every imaginable weather/road condition in the book. There were the idiot speedsters in their over-priced, over-sexed Colorado utes, short-tempered middleclass boaties with twin-engined, twin-axled watercraft and, on the Napier-Taupo highway, sitting on 100kph I was overtaken by a little old lady in her Corolla and a blue Ranger with a cool dude at the wheel who then overtook the Corolla in the face of oncoming traffic — which promptly lit up with pretty blue and red flashing lights. He pulled over.
At Cambridge nine emergency units attended a spaghetti and tomato sauce two car smash.
Negotiating Auckland at dusk in a sodden rush hour was a trial. I was radar gunned on an exit ramp by some crouching bikie in a yellow helmet. There were endless roadworks, fluctuating speed limits, tailgaters and orange witches' hats by the million. Not since Christchurch quakes have I seen so many.
Helensville, Sunday was a pea soup Kaipara fogbound morning, clearing to a mild day.
Monday, before leaving, I glued the plaque on the plot and headed home on a downhill 11-hour trip, arriving to enthusiastic greetings by my two felines.
Last week I was Woodville bound, crossing the Saddle Road. A column of army vehicles was heading the other way.
Stopping to photograph a couple of LAVs, I'd found out they had just disembarked from HMNZS Canterbury from international exercises in Australia. My ordained nephew is this unit's Chaplain. It's a very small world.