Took a phone call this morning, expecting an automated Chinese voice. It wasn't.
Instead, it was someone I didn't know, ringing up to see if I was expecting a new dyson vacuum cleaner (I am). I had had the "its been delivered" notification yesterday and given the courier company and their track record (1 successful delivery in +5 years of living here) I made the incorrect assumption that they had done their usual trick and delivered it to my "local" post office. This assumption was based on the postcode they have for the delivery which is where the post office is.
Nope. Instead they were 180° out and even further afield than my local post office... in fact, it had been left unattended at a local winery after hours, and unsigned for. Luckily it had actually been left in the dry because there was a bad thunderstorm that way last night. We only clipped the edge of it, so didn't get the rain we desperately need.
So I made arrangements with the kind gentleman who was honest, for me to go and collect it and we'd both put in a complaint to the company concerned. I live in a hamlet with the same name as his winery but his winery is 22km away from where I live and there is only 1 common word in the address. Even just using Google maps, it is clear the 2 places are not related. The best example I can give is to say I live in Canberra. I don't but it will do for the sake of the example. Well they may have as well delivered it to Canberra cement works... it would have been closer!
And just to make life even better, on my way there I had to make a choice, stay behind an articulated lorry on the verge of jacknifing whilst swerving to avoid a juvenile kangaroo, or stay in lane 2 with the roo now on the hard shoulder... yeah. I stayed put. The roo didn't. Roos, like all animals have patterns and this one was wrong time of day, wrong location and acting strangely.
my horn stopped it short, but it skidded under the front of the car and both passenger side wheels ran it over. It was dead immediately thankfully.
My 'luck' continued. The drive transmission error message came up on the dash, but I was stopping anyhow. I needed to check the roo, clear it from the carriageway and check if there was a joey.
It turned out that I'd not picked up my mobile phone on the way out and the first few vehicles passed didn't respond to my request for help. Luckily whilst I was sitting recovering my wits a lady stopped without being asked and asked if I was OK. She was exceptionally helpful and after I had rung hubby to come down with a toolkit and my phone, we cleared the carriageway, checked the roo was dead and checked for a joey. It was a female, but no joey thankfully. I didn't even get her name but she has my thanks.
Then my attention turned to the car. It's its 3rd collision with a roo that we know of. It's why it has proper roo bars and this roo hadn't touched them. It went directly under them as it skidded to a stop and its legs went from under it. I'd killed the underneath wheel arch trim yet again. all of that and some extra stuff needed pulling off to clear the front passenger tyre. But everything looked OK ignoring the water pouring out from underneath the vehicle well back from the engine bay. The kind of place that leaves you scratching your head... it was water, it wasn't oil, it wasn't radiator fluid, it wasn't brake fluid... catching some in my hands showed it was clear and colourless and no odour.... hubby had arrived by now, so we decided to risk the 1km down the hard shoulder to the rest stop where we would be safer to crawl under the car if the error message on the dash was gone. Neither of us could see damage to the vehicle aside from the trim I'd had to remove. Well the error message had gone, so we trundled down the hard shoulder to the rest stop... there we left the car whilst we collected the dyson. We may as well given that is where I was heading!
Hubby drove the vehicle home. I had been thinking it was fine from the handling as well, so we headed off back 20km home without any issues. A call to the local garage said bring it down now and they'd check underneath for us. Amazingly there is no damage except for the underside wheel arch trim that's been refitted. The error was simply that you couldn't steer without hitting the trim and impacting the wheel. Me pulling/prising the trim off using the key resolved that error. I'm not questioning how the vehicle knew, but at 110kph and an emergency stop, steering anything that straight was never going to happen.
And the water? That was the air con unit taking its usual dump when the engine was turned off
. The humidity today is twice what it was yesterday because of the storms last night. Total bill $65 for the refitting, a few clips and a check up on the vehicle.
Oh, and for those who have a dyson vacuum cleaner, my dust fairy is back!
), with very few employees that can be trusted to get on with things and having time to myself albeit in fits n spurts is undoubtedly to nicest position I’ve ever been in!
