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Old Jul 14, 2019, 2:49 am
  #15885  
Seat 2A
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: East Ester, Alaska
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Posts: 12,148
Originally Posted by WHBM
Comparable experience here. Parked Friday afternoon in the underground Canary Wharf car park, purely to ease a return to the house with Mrs WHBM and Little Miss WHBM. Duly loaded them up early evening, backed out, went forward 100 feet - flat tyre. How can that happen, it drove in fine and had done 250 miles the previous day.. Should be no issue, out with all the tools, but could I get the wheel off the hub, no way, it was seized on solid, there's a sort of aluminium-to-steel electrolysis corrosion can happen. So others go home and I call out the RAC (UK equivalent of the AAA but with, of course, "Royal" in the title).. Of course, being down in an underground car park there's no mobile phone signal. In retrospect I could have driven it to the front of the carpark, where there is a signal, but by this stage the car is up on the jack. Called them at 6.45pm. FOUR hours later there's still no indication from them that they have even assigned anyone to come, despite me repeated phoning and they keep saying they will call back, so I have to stand where there's a signal. Due to the obscure location they said when assigned they would call for directions, the phone eventually ran flat, the charger is inbuilt in the car - where of course there's no signal. Eventually at 10.45pm I give up and follow the others home on the Underground. Have to go back and get it all sorted out Saturday morning, then go and get a new tyre …. Aaaaargh.
Sorry to hear that, WHBM. Your experience sounds considerably more taxing than mine. At least I broke down in pretty spot with 31 of Japan's most tenacious travelers. The Japanese generally handle situations like this with aplomb compared to their western counterparts and today's group was no different. They all took the delay time to happily hike up onto the circular trail above the road (Upper right quadrant of the picture) and watched with delight as a large bull caribou strolled up the road and into the grassy area above it, seemingly oblivious to the presence of so many visitors just 100 yards away. It was a beautiful day after a week of hot smoky weather from the many wildfires burning in our state. I am indeed blessed to work in this "office"

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