Princess Bea

Mad Kiwi!


OK.... so it was a funny story.
Firstly - this is the beloved jeep that took Bruce and I around the country. Yes.... we traveled from the Bay Area, up to Canada, and back down in Bea. She even survived a huge proportion of a Canadian winter - without an engine block!! I had no idea that oil could freeze like that! haha

Anyway... the story about the painting of the jerry cans.

I had driven out to Canmore to pick up a friend of mine there one beautiful sunny afternoon. Alas, I find Emily and we're off to go find some food with her brother who is staying in Canmore when the jeep decides to die. Tragedy!
The AAA come on out to check it for me, and explain what has happened - so I ring bruce to pick up the part in Calgary, and come on over to fix it. In the meantime... he's at least 1.5 hours away, and we've already eaten. But there is a hardware store down the road!
I had been threatening to paint the jerry cans since the beginning of this adventure - and this was the perfect opportunity!!
So... we go buy some paints, and get to work - this is the end result. Flossy has pretty much been my signature sheep for years. She would appear pretty much on every letter that went out from the States... all my friends had come to know, and love her! hehe. Really!
Seemed the perfect symbol to have on the back of the jeep. Good thing Bruce was pretty convinced about becoming a Kiwi himself at this stage, so it was all good. At the top of the other one is Aotearoa.

Bruce arrived, and just cracked up.

In the end, it became the greatest conversation starter when we were back in the States. Amazing how many Kiwi's we found - especially heading over to Santa Cruz, which is where I was working alot of the time. We'd be cruising along, and always seemed to find either another kiwi - someone would be waving their silver fern cap at us, or being stuck in traffic, which is often the case in the Bay Area, we'd have people stop next to us, and we'd yak away about New Zealand. It was classic!