Bad Friday

Okay not all Fridays wake up at the end of the week thinking, today I am going to be a bad Friday, just like this Friday started off quite nicely, I must say.

I crawled out of bed after a restless early morning, I should have taken this as a sign but no, I had a good start. First I headed to meet the Vespa crowd for a breakfast in Northcliff. Surprise of the day was to see old fellow Vespa rider Stafford at the breakfast. Good to see him between his long rides out exploring Africa on his Vespa. A good catching up was had.

After breakfast, I had some work to do at home, the joys of working from home. I wasn’t home long when I got a phone call from Gert, informing me that the repairs of Matthew’s computer was done and I could pick it up in the next hour. So after a quick check of mails, I headed to Randfontein, then from there across to Benoni on the other side of Johannesburg. Matthew was very pleased that his computer was back but before he could enjoy it, we had to buy some lightning protection as it was power surge is what fried his computer in the first place. While going through Benoni, Matthew and I saw this wheelchair friendly tut-tut. Oh very interesting.

It wasn’t far from here that disaster struck and my Friday went from good to bad. My pickup started losing power with very little revs. I suspected an electrical problem so we limped down town stuttering and backfiring to a look for a battery centre or auto electrician. Seeing one, I nursed the pickup towards it and it died in front of the shop. But for some unknown reason, this shop didn’t have any car batteries even though it advertised on the outside with big signs. They directed me to another battery place not even 2 short blocks away but first they offered to jump start my pickup.

After putting a new battery in and some testing, we found that my alternator had packed up and wasn’t charging the battery. With 3 hours of daylight left, I dropped Matthew at his sister’s place and headed for home. I made it home safe and sound with an hour of daylight left, thank God, He was looking out for me on this bad, horrible end to a Friday.