Gavin got approval on the cellphone print campaign late on Monday evening. He’d worked out that he’d have to be back in Jo’burg by the following Monday. So if he was going to have any kind of holiday, he’d have to leave for Port Elizabeth immediately.
He’d worked late for five nights straight, so if he went to sleep now, he’d probably sleep the whole of Tuesday. Then he’d have to drive on Wednesday, drive back Sunday… His holiday in the bay would be reduced to three days.
Nah, bugger it, he thought. He’d buy three Red Bulls at the Grayston Drive BP, fill up with unleaded and hit the road.
The Z3 could do the thousand-odd kays to PE in eight hours if he chose the right route. Bloem, Colesberg, Venterstad, Steynsburg, Hofmeyr, Cradock, PE. And the roads would be empty in the early-morning hours.
It was about 10pm when Gavin got his change from the petrol attendant, reset his odometer and pointed the roadster at Madiba Bay.
The first Bullie worked its magic and the 300km to Bloemfontein flew by in what seemed like no time. He topped up his tank with unleaded, as the AA had recommended, grabbed a bag of peri-peri biltong snap sticks – more out of diligence than hunger – and continued.
He took the Norvalspont turn-off just before Colesberg and skirted the Gariep Dam en route to Venterstad.
He’d driven this route before, and something in the back of his mind told him there was a sneaky turn-off ahead. He just couldn’t remember what exactly it was. He sipped his second Red Bull as he approached Venterstad.
Five hours out of Jo’burg, Gavin found himself in Burgersdorp. The only problem was he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Around 4am, Gav pulled into a deserted petrol station on Burgersdorp’s main road, dug out the AA Book Of The Road and recalibrated. Mmm, there it was. He’d missed the right turn to Steynsburg just before Venterstad. He’d have to go back 65 kays. Unless…
A closer look at the map seemed to indicate a route to Hofmeyr that would let him rejoin his cunning route with little delay. The R391. The map showed a red line that became a pink line after a while. Did that mean a gravel road?
No matter – it would only be about 30-odd kays of gravel at the most.
Soon enough, Gav was rattling along on a dusty farm road barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the Z3. Grass as high as his windowsill licked at the mirrors as he slewed from side to side, trying to maintain a hundred.
A sick Red Bull heartburn rose in his gut, even as his eyelids began to droop…
The next thing to register in Gavin Bull’s brain was an upside-down view of a dusty farm road just before sunrise. He’d fallen asleep! And his head had slumped into an inverted position! He was halfway onto the passenger seat! Before he could pull himself upright, there came the quite unique wickety-wickety-wickety sound generated by a BMW Z3 slewing down a barbed-wire fence at about a hundred kays an hour, uprooting poles as it went.
As the fence wires tore loose they lashed across the windscreen, the barbs shrieking against the glass and gouging striations out of the Shatterprufe.
All of this looks quite spectacular when viewed upside down, with one’s head against the passenger-seat headrest, as the latest Zola album plays loud and mysterious on the car stereo.
By the time Gavin’s brain registered what the implications of wickety-wickety-wickety and the shrieking and the gouging striations were for him and his upside-down life, there was an upside-down tree in view as well…
Brakes were applied not a moment too soon, and the value of ABS braking was demonstrated once again, as dawn lit upon the Hofmeyr district, providing just enough light for Gavin Bull to eventually savour the beauty of life anew beneath a wizened wattle tree on the R391.
As Gav stared out at the world from the driver’s seat of his stationary Z3, the Eastern Cape looked more beautiful than it had ever seemed to him.
He would spend his holiday in PE with a spiralling striation pattern across the bonnet and left side of his car quite unmatched in the history of automotive décor.
He would also spend the holiday with a brand-new belief in the existence of angels. Because after all, it was an angel who’d woken him up that morning around dawn on the R391 outside Hofmeyr. And angel had saved his life. Had to be.
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