Ok this is a rant, complete and utter! I have not decided if the language will be coarse or restrained, at the moment I am still fuming. Last night I was driving down to Dorset for a weekends R&R away from the whole that is Slough (I’m sure if you live there then you may like it, but I like the countryside, trees & a at least half an hours between planes taking off) . It had been a good drive, no major holdups not even in the M3, I had taken little more than 3 hours to get to Blandford, after short break in the car park of a super market it was time to finish the long drive. The sun had completely gone down by now and it was starting to rain, now cars are well equipped for these conditions, even impractical ones like mine.
Now I should explain I am on a fairly major A road (2 lanes 1 each way), while it is twisty and hilly it is a road that is in good condition, this is the last 20 miles of my journey. I envoy driving in the dark so that it no problem. HOWEVER there are some inconsiderate people out there that can not be bothers to take their lights of Main beam (I yanks call them Hi Beams) off, when they encounter a car coming in the other direction, this happened to me. Now another of my pet hates when it comes to driving is lorries that are overloaded, especially when the stuff is just blowing or falling off the top.
So the scene is set, an inconsiderate Driver and some truck driver that could not be bothered to make sure that his load was secure. Dazzled by the headlights of the oncoming car, I did not see a big lump of rubble, in fact more like a small bolder until too late. With the lightening quick reactions I missed the bolder with the front wheels, but must have clipped it with the rear. Now at this time I was doing around 55mph, had my front tyre blown out I would probably a) be writhing this from a hospital bed, and b) looking for a new car.
So by this point I had a Flat Tyre and was pretty pissed off! There I am stuck in the middle of nowhere, sweat FA signal on the phone and almost a flat phone battery. Now normally changing a Tyre would normally be no problem, however remember these points:
It’s dark, pouring with rain and I a have a flat Tyre beside a fast road. There was no way I am changing this wheel. So there is just enough power to call the AA and tell them approximately where I was and then settle down to wait for the chappie in the big yellow van to arrive. All lights on so that he will not miss me.
Around 30 minutes later he turns up and changes the wheel. Now to crown off the whole bloody charade I went to start the car up and the batter was flat, luckily the man from the AA was still there and I was able to get my car started. All I have to do now is get down to the finishing the journey. I go to turn on the Radio nothing just the word “SAFE”. Bugger I now have to hope that the local dealer ship have got the security codes for the Radio and CD stack.
Now to stop all this off I had just 2 months ago I had all 4 Tyre’s replaced.
Thats another £150 down the drain!