the Chinese have an insult, "may you live in interesting times"; this pretty much sums up my week.
Looking on the bright side of things, I now have weekends and evening again, and I am no longer working under the shadow of an unrealistic workload. On the good advice of a friend of mine (Jan-Inge), the first paragraphs in this blog have undergone a dramatic edit. J-I raised some good points. I still have a very bad taste in my mouth and my views haven't changed, but it has been made abundantly clear to me that, despite public airing being one of the two forums that I have been left with, it's not in my best interest to use this forum. The last bastion of righteousness is conversation with my friends.
Now the second 'cock up' if you'll excuses the pun, is I wrote 'pikk' when I meant to write 'pigg', so need to go and rectify this one. Look up the Norwegian words on google translate, and you'll see why this was a 'cock up' ;-)
It's been established for accidents to happen, normally a set of circumstances has to be present, in a specific order for the accident to happen. Last Tuesday, I had a car accident. I put my car in a position where it was hit by another car. Happily no one was hurt, and both cars can be economically repaired. I've been trying to get the local Subaru dealer to look at my car since July. After contacting them five times, I got a time for last Tuesday, I was also told that they'd give me a courtesy car whilst they worked on mine. Turn up at the garage, they then told me that I had to rent a car if I wanted one. Very busy at work, no bike in car (as I'd been told that I'd get a car); so I told them that I'd have to bring the car back another time. It's probably five k from the garage to the place that exploited me and then screwed me royally, and I was hit by a car on a roundabout on the way. Undeniably my fault, but had I not been so tired because of work, or had the garage given me a courtesy car, the parameters might have been enough that there was no white lorry coming off, where I was coming on with a white car tucked behind it...
For various reasons the last car I bought, I bought brand new. I did my homework and chose a car that is recognisable form it's 1972 inception (so they should have sorted all the issues out on it), had ESP (very helpful on iced roads, add piggdekk {metal studded tyres} and you feel very safe), four wheel drive, higher ground clearance but looks like an estate car. Most of the driving I do is on roads, but because of the sports that I do, I drive down farm tracks and into strange places on a regular basis,
a Land Rover type vehicle would be excessive for my needs but the Subaru Outback should have done the trick. Like most folk, I believe that the guarantee that comes with something is a 'nice to know it's there' but something you never want to use, sadly this isn't the case with my car, that has had problems with the wheel studs falling off the hubs so that three of the wheels were only held on by 2 or 3 studs (out of five). It's had problems with the clutch (which has been replaced, more than once. It has problems with the radio, the windows, the jack for an MP3 player. The lowest gear is too high to negotiate steep tracks where you need to control the speed of the car. Car drives great on the roads, and the boxer diesel engine has so far been excellent, no power lag and plenty of umph when required spread over four wheels.
Whilst my car is being repaired/serviced, I have a rental car (my insurance company is 'IF' and they have been most efficient in helping me out). Now I am no fan of Audi's or BMW, both of which I consider to be overpriced and you generally find that these are the cars that are humping your rear bumper on the motorway, BMW are rear wheel drive, that is just a flawed concept in a country that has snow, and I don't like red cars (red cars tend to die violently). The rental car is a red BMW 316 d, top of the range. It struggles to get up the hill at Bråstein, if you have to stop, the back wheels claw impotently until it gets grip, and it's ground clearance makes speed bumps a challenge, and the controllability of the Subaru is sooooo much better. But to be fair to the Beemer, it is really well thought out, sitting inside you think, it would be handy if they had 'that', 'there' and it is. It's got some great features on it
and the Subaru seems agricultural by compassion. I wouldn't swap the Subaru for the BMW, and I wouldn't advocate a rear wheel drive car in a country like Norway, but I am impressed by the attention to detail on the Beemer. What confuses me is why a Saab, Subaru, Land Rover dealer is doing with a top of the range BMW as a rental car?
I did ask them if they could give me a more practical car, and pointed out that I'd have to have Kin in the car, they told me just to keep him dry (yeah right) and if he messed the car up I'd be charged to get it professionally cleaned... and thus:
Note that the front of the seat also needs to be protected:
Now when I changed from a Mondeo estate to the Outback, Karma liked to make out that the Subaru's boot was tiny, this BMW's boot is tiny even for a 10 month old Newfie.
So as the guarantee is running out on my Subaru should I sell the car and look at a Skoda Yeti or a Volvo XC70 (looks like a traditional Volvo but with 4 wd and greater ground clearance), that maybe better for Kin, & my requirements?
Needed a proper camera to try to capture the light. This is one of those beautiful summer evenings where the air smells/feels fresh and you just want to be outside (and it's warm enough that hypothermia isn't a problem)!
I love going for walks in the early morning (not the waking up bit, but once you are out), and watching he dew burn off the fields. I haven't seen this at all this year up until this weekend.
Anyway, the good weather seems to have broken last night and we are back into the monsoon season; and Kin and I are off to Bråstein.
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