Mid afternoon today, I phoned my friendly and excellent mechanic (since he’s now back from holiday), and I said “I’ll bring the car in tomorrow morning, it’s started sort of juddering and wobbling a little bit, and the juddering increases with speed. I’ve checked the tyres and I don’t see anything weird.[1]”
On my way home late this afternoon, I am ignoring the wobbling and (as is my custom) singing along with songs on my phone, when the following happened:
“I try to discover …”
[judder judder]
“… a little something that makes me sweeter ..”
[judder JUDDER judder]
“… oh baby, refrain … from breaking my heart…”
[JUDDER judder JUDDER RUMBLEJUDDER]
“… I’m so in love with….”
[BOOOM TWAP TWAP CLONK THWAP CLUNK THWAP GRONK THWAP] … [The hyperdrive malfunctioning noise from Empire Strikes Back goes here]
And then I had a hilarious wait at the side of the motorway armed with my spare tyre and jack and jack-handle but amusingly without a tyre iron (oh my sides) until the AA dude showed up with his slight smile and his infuriating air of casual competence and a whole range of goddamn tyre irons.
[1]
“I check the tyres for anything weird.”
“Okay, roll the dice.”
“I rolled a one. That’s good, right?”
January 5, 2009 at 6:00 am
Well done that man. That’s certainly well and truly done for.
January 5, 2009 at 6:06 am
Eeek! That’s pretty impressive.
January 5, 2009 at 6:07 am
I hope that is the end of the wobbling! I do not like to be a jelly on a plate!
January 5, 2009 at 9:00 am
The wobbling caused jiggle in a way that was not at all unpleasing to my eye, though possibly a bit distracting.
January 5, 2009 at 8:30 am
OOoh impressive.
Do you remember the time you blew out a tyre with me on the back of your motorbike?
January 5, 2009 at 8:37 am
Oh cool, that must have been well scary. Much worse than the time he had me in his mini and his MacPherson strut just fell apart.
January 5, 2009 at 8:58 am
And the moral is: never share motorised transport with JSR.
I recall the paternal grumbling at being summoned for a rescue was even scarier than all the banging and wobbling.
January 6, 2009 at 2:33 am
Parental grumbling about all that banging and wobbling with JSR, huh?
Someone had to say it.
January 6, 2009 at 2:40 am
And that too.
January 5, 2009 at 9:02 am
This event, however, I don’t recall. I still kinda miss that mini, though I do appreciate that cars built in later years tend to … work … more often .. than it did.
January 5, 2009 at 9:03 am
Also, my macpherson strut failing? … That happens to lots of guys! I was just tired!
January 5, 2009 at 9:06 am
And a little drunk?
January 6, 2009 at 2:32 am
It takes an impressive amount of neglect or direct damage to make a MacPherson strut do anything other than work. Having ridden JSR’s XJ750 of old I know exactly which one I would consider most likely. 🙂
January 6, 2009 at 9:39 am
I LAVISHED attention on my macpherson strut. I still do, to this day.
January 5, 2009 at 9:00 am
Yes, I surely do. I hope you remain impressed that I was able to keep the bike controlled until we came to a complete halt. Because seriously, we should have crashed like woah.
January 5, 2009 at 9:04 am
I remember being a tad-bit awestruck 🙂 And rather please not to be all dead and stuff.
January 8, 2009 at 8:38 pm
A similar thing happened to me a few months ago, however as you probably know I mostly travel by bus, and this happened a quarter of the way through the Lyttelton road tunnel, the driver asks what to do and is told to drive slowly to the end of the tunnel, now as it was the front left tire the entire weight of a large chunk of the bus and it’s passengers is on the tire, so even though we all moved to the right hand side of the bus, the tire made yours look like “an excellent little runner” by the time we got out of the tunnel, buggered if I know how they got it off the bus.