Day 44 - I'll Raise You

 

Lockdown Day 44 - Okay I raise you, declares Minky as our pets vie for the top dog or cat of the castle. The winter's sun in Jozi is out but not that strong so all our pets at home seek the best positions to be the closest to the sun as possible. It is all about finding a warm safe spot.

Operation Suzzette

Yesterday Suzzette, my pickup,went into the mechanic to get her front hubs replaced plus any other things to renew her life. This pickup is about to turn 20, and this major operation will extend her usefulness even further. Besides her wheel hubs that were replaced, her wheel bearings, brake discs, lower control arm ball joints, disc pads and flexible hydraulic hoses were also replaced.

So now today it is the finishing touches, the wheel alignment. Now she drives like a dream. Here's to another decade. 

Missing 6 Hours

 

The case of the missing 6 hours! I loaned my pickup out on Sunday, and then today while on my way to work, the engine started missing. Initially I thought it was dirt in the petrol as it felt very similar to when it was dirt in the fuel. Arriving at work, all electrical power disappeared. I opened the bonnet, and found this. The battery was off its cradle and hanging by only the negative cable. Even the clamps were loose. Strange.

After reconnecting all the terminals, and it was then that I noticed that the clock had lost 6 hours which means the battery had been disconnected for 6 hours. Curiouser and curiouser!

The Pickup

It has been just under a year since my Ford pickup caught on fire and while it was away being repaired the alarm system was stolen. Only now is the alarm being replaced. It has taken Discovery Insure just under a year to pull finger and replace the alarm system that went missing on their watch.

To orchestrate the logistics of getting my pickup to the alarm installer and then get to work, I devised an ingenious plan to put my Vespa at the back of the pickup, off load at the installer and then ride the rest of the way to work. 

Mystery Story

How about a mystery story today? Yesterday when my pickup was returned I discovered that the alarm, immobiliser,  and central locking was not working. Thinking that perhaps it was just a wiring connection that was forgotten I drove my pickup back to the panel beater.

While in the waiting room, waiting for the workshop manager as one does in a panel beater's waiting room, I saw a few woman magazines and this book titled "15 Mystery Short Stories". My first thought was, surely I hope I won't be that long to actually read a short story. Never in a thousand years did I think that I was about to enter an actual mystery.

It wasn't a too long of a wait, and the workshop manager arrived. I told him my story and he asked me to pull my pickup into the workshop while he went to fetch the auto-electrician who worked on my car. When the auto-electrician arrived, and I told him that my alarm does not work. He answered that there never was an alarm in the pickup when it arrived. WHAT!!!

In my hand was the pickup keys with the alarm remote. The auto electrician also thought it was odd as all the alarm wiring, siren, and anti-hijack system was in place BUT no alarm control box. He showed myself and the workshop foreman a bunch of wires that he explained that these wires go into the control box and look how they have been neatly bridged. He explained if it wasn't bridged and the alarm control box had been just yanked out it wouldn't start. The workshop foreman took some photos to cover themselves I suppose but where is my alarm?

The mystery deepens as I  phone my insurance company. Who stole my alarm? It is such an old pickup and the alarm system is old too. I don't think that they make that type any more. Anyways from what I recall. When my pickup caught on fire on Thursday 1 February it had an alarm system. My insurance company got a towing company to collect pickup and take it to their yard for the assessor to come inspect. But somehow they lost my pickup and it was only found a week later on the following Friday 9 February. I was told that when the towing company arrived to drop my pickup off, the yard was full and they took it to a yard next door. That is what I was told by my insurance broker when they finally found my pickup.

I got a call from an assessor not long after that asking me if my battery was flat. I answered no and that was the last I heard until I got an email from the insurance company that my claim was approved and that they are sending my pickup to the panel beater.

Over a month since the fire, I got my pickup back minus a alarm system. It is up to the insurance company to solve the mystery and rectify. I'll go back to reading some mystery novels. 

When it Rains

All I have is a little faith. They say even with little faith you can move mountains. I am trying, believe me, I am trying. It seems that somehow with the little faith that I have I am getting through the month but it is still piling up in front of me. 

My pickup Suzzette, was dropped off this afternoon in the midst of a highveld thunderstorm. The repair work looked okay but I could not stay long in the rain as I am down with a nasty bug since yesterday. Yes I did not eat any polony or any viennas as I don't enjoy pink slime, so it can't be that listeriosis recall.

Later when I was putting Suzzette away, I notice that the alarm did not work. Oh dear now I have to make sure that she is under lock and key for the night and the beams activated around her just to keep her safe until I can get her back to the panel beaters tomorrow morning.

An Eventful Journey

There is an old sailing saying that goes something like it is a bad omen if the weather is calm at the beginning of the voyage. Matthew and a few friends had booked a bungalow at Rocky Bay for their end of Matric getaway and when Matthew’s lift fell through, I offered to take him down instead of him going by public transport. Most of the friends flew down but 2 came with me along with all their food for the next 10 days.

I have this blessing that I give all my friends to fly out to Europe, Americas, or Asia, may you have an un-eventful flight, as events in a flight is not what anyone wants. So began my eventful journey as no-one blessed our journey.

I left home at 08H30, stopped at the nearest garage, filled up with fuel, checked my tyres. Thank God I did as my spare tyre was flat. I asked them to check water and oil too, but the serviceman must have forgotten, as I paid and drove off. A few kilometres down the road I realise that my bonnet was still open, and it was then that it dawned on me that the oil and water was not checked. So I stopped at the next service station to check water and oil. Oil was fine but engine coolant was below low. Then it was onto the highway to Benoni to pick up the 2 boys and all the food. We left Benoni at at 10:30 and it was not long into the journey, like 30mins when we hit this 5km backup. At the end of the backup was a police roadblock. Sigh!

About 100km before Harrismith, I started hearing a noise from the front right hand side. It sounded like bearings, but it can’t be as I had the car serviced a month ago, they did my brakes, replaced my front wheel bearings and the front wheel hubs. So it simply can’t be but it was getting loader and loader. On top of that I started getting automated calls from my bank stating that there is a possibility of fraudulent activity on one of my bank cards. By the time I got to Harrismith, I was a wreck with worry.

We had a bite to eat at the fuelling stop at Harrismith because the boys were hungry. I tried to eat but couldn’t even eat with all the worries. I phoned my insurance about getting a hired car but they informed me that they can only give me a hired car if I was involved in a crash or hijacking. Bugger that, where is the nearest wall that I can drive into.

I slowly drove to the car hire place in Harrismith, booked a car, and asked directions to the nearest, reliable, and reasonable mechanic. Yes it is my wheel bearings which means that my wheel bearings have been replaced 3 times this year alone. Something is not right. The last service with the brakes, hubs, and bearings cost me a little over R2000, this mechanic saw me coming a mile off because he managed to replace the bearings but at a whopping cost of R1280. But good news 2 hours later we were back on the road and didn’t need the hired car.

By the time we got to Mooiriver, it was raining and cold. In the rain somewhere near Howick, my one globe popped. Now I had 1 light in dims, and brights only. Because of the 2 hour delay at Harrismith and the rain we started driving slower, by the time we got to Pietermaritzburg it was dark. And the rain got harder, and the driving conditions got progressively worse that I only got to Park Rynie at 21:50. With the boys dropped off at Rocky Bay, I was now traveling back to Durban to were I am staying for the weekend. I ended my eventful journey at 22:38, that is 14 hours later.

Guardian Angel

Today my guardian angel worked overtime. To start my story let me start 2 weeks back when I first drove my pickup. I left after work on that Friday 2 weeks ago and rushed over to Benoni to pick up Matthew. As a surprise to Matthew, I had arranged to pick up his cousin Jean-Jurie in Pretoria and drove the long road home late in the evening with 2 boys in the back unbeknown to me that my guardian angel was protecting me in overtime mode.

I arrived home quite late and parked my pickup only to get back in it this morning 2 weeks later as I had to pick up Matthew for my birthday weekend and father’s day. On my usual pre-inspection before setting out to work, I noticed that the pickup’s left front tyre was flat. Expecting that I must have picked up a nail or something those 2 weeks earlier and now have a leak I slowly drove my pickup to the nearest service station and pumped up the tyre. It was on 0.4 bar of pressure but worse was that my brakes were spongy, I must have somehow gotten air into the brake system which was very strange. I carefully drove to work in rush hour traffic.

The first gap I got, I decided to take it in to the closest tyre place to where I was working. The tyre was taken off and checked for any leaks but, this is the next strange park, no leak was found. No nail or leaking valve, nada, nothing. Someone must have let my tyre down. Not thinking that it could have been my guardian angel, as my first obvious person would be the plumber contractor that I had working on my property but things between us had soured. When the tyre was put back, the fitter discovered that my entire hub was lose, hanging on by the last thread of the centre wheel nut, the brake line, and the CV joint.

Oh my word, I was in shock. The entire wheel was about to come off. If I was driving on the highway to fetch Matthew, I could have had a serious accident. Or even worse it could have come off that night when I had the 2 boys in my pickup. Who could have loosened the centre nut? It dawned on me that my guardian angel must have let my tyre down this morning to warn me of the impending danger.

In conclusion to this story is that after the centre nut was retightened and locked into place, the tyre was put back and strangely the brakes were back to normal. My guardian angel must be working overtime protecting me and my family, thank you.

Clutch Control

We arrived home from Rustenburg yesterday afternoon only to find that the power has been cut. All our Eskom electricity bills are fully paid, and after phoning, we discovered that they switched off the wrong property. Okay sort of good news is that not ours but the neighbours should have been disconnected but the bad news is that we have to wait up to 24 hours before someone can come out to reconnect us. Not good enough Eskom as it is the middle of winter and it was your mistake.

All I could do is to take Matthew driving and teaching him clutch control. Yes he has now got his learners which means, everyone stay off the sidewalks, here comes Matthew. After a few jerky starts, Matthew soon got the hang of changing gears. Oh boy this means soon he will be out on his own.

Okay so far Eskom, has told us that they have someone on their way, so many times now that we don’t believe them anymore. What a bunch of liars and jokers, Eskom has turned out to be.

Needs a Cleaning

With snow and rain on its way this afternoon, it just made perfect sense to wash may pick-up, don’t you think. Na, it is just that I have my mother coming up from Nelspruit towards the end of the week and well my pickup needs a cleaning.

TAH 1952

A group of Voortrekkers known as the Jerusalem Trekkers, set out north from the Cape in the 1860s towards the Holy Land but with only the maps at the back of their Bibles to go on they thought they had reached the Nile River when they came upon a wide river flowing northwards and a rocky hill which they thought was a ruined pyramid. Sadly they were over 6,000km out.

The Voortrekkers settled in the area and formed a small village on the banks of the Nyl River in 1866 and called it Nylstroom. During the Boer War the British set up a concentration camp here and interned the Boer women and children while the troops burnt the land in their Scorched Earth policy to try flush out the Boer soldiers.

The name of the town was changed to Modimolle, the local name for the same rocky hill that was supposed to be a ruined pyramid. The name is derived from the Tswana words “Modimo o lie” meaning “the forefathers have eaten”.

Now with the words “White Genocide” becoming more and more brandied out freely as an old BBC report from 2013 is brought back to life, I have always thought this was one sided as many poor, black and white have become poorer while a few have become rich off the new South Africa. This is becoming a slippery slope I don’t know how we can get out of. This is very evident driving through the small towns of our Rainbow Nation of how dirt poor a lot of people are and in Modimolle today, along what was thought to be the Nile River, we came across Charlie and Suzzette with their 3 dogs, 3 donkeys, and all their belongings, and I mean all that they process on a donkey cart. This abandoned family was in search of shelter for the night after being unceremoniously kicked out of their home.

The question that I am rising “So where to now Rainbow Nation?”