Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Kam’s Column - 29/10/02
Let me tell you, regular reader, I’m all shopped out – and I only bought myself a pair of Levis and a copy of Car And Driver! What a week it was in New York, Mandy and I were taken around all of the sites by our good friends in The Village, caught a couple of Broadway shows and checked out the museums in the city that – literally – never sleeps. I really never knew how high Mandy’s capacity for shopping was – while I got bored finding the right pair of 501s and got lost in Borders hunting for the car magazines, Mandy was up and down 5th like a dervish, darting into this shop and that that, pausing only for a swift Iced Mocca before heading off again into credit card heaven… By the end of the day, she was even carrying one bag in her teeth to ease the downward pressure on her shoulders!
There’s only just so much city dwelling I can do in a week, and soon, the lure of the open road off-island was calling. So, my friend kindly lent me his splendid Lincoln to hit the road with. It was a real looker as well as a superb driver and within a very short period of time, I was off-island and enjoying the scenery of the ‘real’ America. However, just as I decided to turn back and head for home, the Lincoln decided to find the only nail on the road and punctured one of the rear tyres! Typical… Still, at least there was a space saver in the boot so I wasn’t totally marooned.
Back on-island, I pulled into the first large garage to get a new tyre installed. Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting in their somewhat grubby waiting room, hoping that they hadn’t forgotten me. The next garage was not much better and wouldn’t give a quote for the new tyre and labour charges. Thankfully, the next garage at least told me how much it would be and promised that the job would be done inside twenty minutes. It then took me another fifteen minutes to remove the greasy handprints left on the pristine white wing… I’ve been all over the USA and this is probably the worst service that I have ever received! You might remember that I said my friend owned a garage – so why didn’t I take it there? Simple, his joint is at the other end of the island and, while the space saver is adequate, it isn’t ideal and I was driving back in the rush hour! Better safe than sorry, especially when in someone else’s car.
When I arrived back on Monday morning, still slightly jet lagged, I saw that one of our most loyal customers had called in. It seemed that Mrs Jacobson had a rather unusual problem with her vehicle – one that would require a chainsaw to fix… In short, the thousand-mile-an-hour (or thereabouts!) winds had brought two trees down across her driveway, missing the car by inches! She had spoken to the council earlier in the day but was told that as the trees used to grow on her property, there was nothing that they could do! So Mrs Jacobson called us in the hope that we would know someone with the ability to get rid of the offending trees.
As ever at Kam, we went one better and sent our recovery vehicle down to her house along with Andy and his chainsaw! It didn’t take too long before the tress were cut into manageable pieces and the trucks were the hoisted onto the back of the truck. The chainsaw, being a noisy thing, quickly attracted attention and within minutes, several of the neighbours wanted trees shifting! By the end of the morning, our recovery vehicle was piled high with chopped trees! When I came to Kam, I would never have thought that we’d end up chopping up trees for our customers!
So what did we do with all of the wood? Well, one of the guys knows a man who is good friends with a councillor here in the Midlands and, as luck would have it, that particular council are planning a rather large fireworks party in the next few days. Needless to say, they were extremely grateful that someone else had done all the hard work for them!
You can tell that Christmas is fast approaching, I’m putting together a present list (starting with the diagnostic equipment that I’m going back to the States for shortly) and the days are really drawing in. Of course, this brings its own problems, as you need to remember to get your anti-freeze checked and your brakes fully inspected to deal with the cold, and probably icy, weather.
And while I’m on about all of the checks that we carry out here at Kam, don’t forget your timing belts. We had to recover another two vehicles (once we’d brushed the leaves off the recovery vehicle!) at the end of last week and both repairs were horribly expensive. Just avoid all of the problems, bring your car to Kam and get us to do all of the checking for you!
Until next week,
Dr Kev Allen
