Emergency STOP

As I was driving my daughter back home last night we had a small emergency in my car. One of the red warning lights came on, the one that says STOP in big red letters. One of the other symbols lit up in red as well. The main problem with this, is while I completely understand what the STOP message meant, my grasp of symbolese is very limited. Looking closely at the symbol it looked a little like a bagel or maybe as it’s a French Car a round Brioche. Maybe it was telling me it was time for a buttery French bread snack; I doubted this as it hadn’t even come on as we drove through France last summer. And as I didn’t have the appropriate manual with me at the time, in fact I don’t even own the appropriate manual, I had to do some logical thinking and some investigative checking.

First things first, check the levels.

Water OK – check
Oil Ok – check
Hydraulic fluid O.. – cheque!

Hmmm the little red floater thingy was not where it should be – between the two red lines on the glass window, it was just about on the bottom line and this was probably setting off the light. That’s OK I thought as I distinctly remember buying some fluid before I drove to Ukraine last summer (I was a Boy Scout – Be prepared is my motto). I looked in the back of the car in my plastic box of car stuff – NO FLUID! Damn.

Ok I’ll drive to the nearest Service Station and buy some. Got back in the car, the STOP light didn’t come on so off to the nearest Petrol Station to get some fluid. At the first one I hunted high and low, but could I find some? No! I could have bought Tampax, Sliced White Bread, TV Dinners, Diet Coke, Milk, Sugar and Tea, Porno magazines, TV Magazines, Little smelly cardboard tree things to go in the car, Condoms, Chocolate, Peas, Charcoal, Cheese and Wilted flowers for my wife, but no hydraulic fluid for my car and they call it a service station – pah!.

I repeated this investigation at the next six service/petrol stations en route to my daughters’ home. No fluid, but I came away with a fluffy fleece car blanket, a hands free kit, a pair of binoculars, a 1,000,000 watt torch, a pair of fluffy dice and a girly magazine for later!

As I drove from service station to service station watching the light flick on and off intermittently I considered what my hero would have done in these circumstances. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space and I’m sure if a little red light had come on in his capsule telling him his hydraulic fluid was low he would have come up with a solution. So at the next service station I started to seriously consider the viscosity of the various liquids on the shelves. Would milk or diet coke do the trick? I was loathe to use diet coke or any coke for that matter as I have seen what it does when you leave a old dirty coin in it for an hour or two, it would eat through my stainless steel pipes. (I hate to think what happens when you drink it).

Perhaps pineapple juice was better than milk, or is chocolate milk thicker? What would Yuri choose? It dawned on me that at that time Chocolate milk was probably not available in the Soviet Union so it would have been unlikely for it to have been in Yuri’s lunch pack. He would have probably had some tea or a flask of Borsch with him. Perhaps even his own piss, he probably had bags and bags of it floating around the capsule in plastic bags. But when it comes down to it, I think it’s the viscosity that is the main factor, how the liquid performs under pressure. (Perhaps one of you boffins at NASA or the former Soviet Space place who are reading my blog could come up with a definitive answer here. Which liquid would Yuri have chosen to refill his hydraulics - Chocolate Milk, Orange Juice (no bits), Diet Coke or his own piss). My guess is Orange juice or piss.

Anyway in the end, like Yuri, I kept my nerve and got my daughter home safe and managed to drive the 30 miles back home without any hydraulic related incident apart from the STOP light flashing on and off at me occasionally. But my main question is why, considering the motorist is their main customer, have Service /Petrol Stations decided that groceries are their main product, even when the petrol station is part of the Supermarket chain and located in their car park 100 metres away from where the same stuff is on the shelves, and now only sell a very limited set of car related products - a few bottles of oil, smelly tree things, windscreen washer, stuff for getting bugs of the front and L plates. Never anything I want!

So now I have to go to the specialist car shop – only open I might add, between 9 and 5 weekdays, never when you breakdown at 6 o clock on a Sunday evening – and they call that service huh?

To finish today’s blog on a further note about my engineering and technical prowess. I am proud that this weekend I attached my new pannier carrier to my bike with a bit left over from my Ikea wardrobes. This is classic British engineering bodging, the sort of thing Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have been proud of. The two clamps that were provided with the rack were too small for my bike (built by myself I might add) so to attach the pannier to the frame, I took this small metal widget that should be fixing the wardrobes to the wall bent it into the right shape and voila a custom made clamp that perfectly fitted around the frame - I am so proud, here I am puffed up and crowing.

La la, its Monday morning and I are happy.