Rum & Dal

Beautiful sunny day, started off with an appointment in St Kilda.  All went ok until we left the building… the parking cost of $24 for only three hours!  You can just imagine how much it hurt the old wallet!

Anyway, moving on with the day we decided to take the rest of the day off work and take a trip to Hoppers Crossing to again look for furniture and ideas for the house.  Merrily going down the Princess Highway at 90kph in the 4th lane.  All of a sudden I realise the accelerator isn’t doing anything.  PANIC! On momnetum alone manage to get the car to the left lane but just missing the slip road by a couple of meters which would have taken me to a service station - damn! “Do we have breakdown cover?” I ask Rum.  “No” he says - damn, damn! “Who do we call?” I say. “Ghostbusters”, he says - damn, damn, damn! So we get out and go to the service station, get the number for RACV (Victoria’s Roadside Recovery), and call them up.  As we don’t have membership we are in the middle of processing this and the phone cuts out! Back to the service station to get more credit for the phone… back on the phone to RACV.  Incidentally, in the UK the first thing the RAC ask you is your mobile number, even before your name, just incase you do get cut off, they ring you back.  Now thats service!

Rum completes his membership and back to me now to let them know where we are.  I give her an exact address that was provided by the service station rep, but RACV have no idea where we are!  A service sation on a major freeway… can it get any easier?

Anyway, luckily for us, the car has restarted and we decide to take it further down the Freeway and see if we make it to Hoppers Crossing.  We just about make it to the next exit before the car cuts out again.  This time we make it to another station and again I have to call RACV and try to tell them where we are.  Success eventually after I tell them the road name intersection! (Mental note, to always give crossings).

So now we are sitting there waiting for the RACV guy.  Rum has checked the oil, topped up the water and put air in his tyres.  RACV guy turns up, asks us what the problem is, takes the car for a drive and tells us it is ok.  Thats it!  No inspection, no tools, no nothing and not even a smile. Rum asked him if he would follow us just across the road to the shops but he was too busy and he sped off.

We managed to get to the shops and had a look around for a while. Didn’t find anything much but we were tired and a little annoyed by this point.  I nervously drove home thinking the damned car would cut out again at any minute.  In my non thinking, panic state I took the wrong turn and ended up on a toll road which are all electronically tagged here in VIC.  The signs aren’t the clearest and if you are new to driving around VIC then its easy to take the wrong turn off a freeway.  I was on this road for a maximum of 2km and got off straight away at the next junction but I can expect a letter through the post charging me for using the toll road and a fine for not having a pass! The car on the other hand was fine the whole way home, its a mystery.

Totally pissed off by now, we got home and decided we were better off going to work!