i theorise on the law of broken boots

After the recent boot catastrophe for my car, I thought I could get by for a few days without any difficulty until I can get it fixed by the dealer.

I hadn't counted on this week's Very Important Business Meeting and the arrival of Important Overseas Visitors. I found myself in the position of having to ferry a couple of them from our office to a hotel, prior to their departure to a different hotel. The task when we got there..

to pick up their luggage...

As it was anyway part of a long chain of inconvenient logistics, there was other help on hand to resolve everything quickly, but I think there is a Law associated with that type of situation.

busted 2 - dieppe problems with the luggage

There were a few tell-tale signs that all was not quite what it seemed. We'd packed the luggage in the car and I'd tried to close the boot. It refused a couple of times. I pushed a little harder and it finally co-operated. I noticed a slightly different gap on one side of the closed shape compared with normal. I even ran my finger tips along it in mild recognition that something was different.

We hit the road back to where the content was to be unloaded and distributed. Some to go indoors, and the rest to be distributed to another car that was about to travel to France. On the way home, I stopped to buy milk. I pinged the electric boot release to attempt to put it inside. Nothing happened. "Whose been playing with the controls?" I quipped as we placed the milk on the rear passenger knees for the last section of the journey.

Home.

Ping.

Nothing.

Mild consternation at this stage. Find the key for the boot instead.

Still nothing.

"Hmm, we have a problem. All your luggage for France is stuck in the boot and it won't open."

My mind thinking that my car is kind of definite. If it doesn't do something after a couple of goes, then it probably won't.

"Can we get into the boot from the rear seats?"

I had this flashback to the time I'd locked the keys in the boot a couple of years ago. I called out the car company specialists. He'd explained these are great cars because the boot area is so secure. The only way to break in involved damage to the vehicle. At that time I had watched him do clever things and after alarms going off we managed to pop the boot and reset everything. Then I had to take the car to dealer to have the repairs carried out.

This time it was Sunday. I called the car company specialist hot line. They offered advice "someone sit on the boot whilst you open it with a key" and then repeated what the previous person had said. The boot was invincible without damage. I should take it to a dealer on Monday.

"What about the luggage?" - "No really, if we send someone around, they won't be able to do it if you've tried the normal techniques".

Indoors, people were on the internet finding forums which also noted that this was difficult and stories of people spending two unsuccessful hours. Violent and incredibly expensive locksmith phone numbers were being noted for later use.

Then the AA, who would be glad to come around, but my concern was that they would run into the same problems as me.

I reached for my screwdrivers and spent 15 minutes trying to remember what the specialist had done when I lost my keys. I noticed there were still a few scrape marks on a normally hidden section which hinted that I was going along the right path. Then a combination of keys and clicks, and finally.

Clunk.

The boot swung open. Everyone indoors ran outside and stopped me from closing it again. "Quick take out the luggage and tell the AA they don't need to come around". The silence of single minded focus on one topic washed away and normal conversations resumed.

Afterwards, I closed the boot again. It stayed shut. The remote control and the driver switch don't work. I can now open it with the not designed for regular use key. The middle brake light has stopped working and a couple of bulbs. My car dashboard is normally rather quiet but since my exploits with a screwdriver is scrolling a series of warning messages about defective components.

It doesn't even mention that the empty boot won't open.

The car goes in for repairs next week.

Packing luggage? - less is more.

Dieppe? They made the ferry.

busted

As a public service, it's necessary to reveal the perpetrators of the Saturday bus ballooning, whereby a perfectly serviceable red bus was customised for special duties. The addition of surprisingly noisy balloons along its sides preceded the bus taking a short journey after which certain folk came back changed forever.

Of course, we all had a great time and by Sunday, when my own car left bursting with luggage from the weekend and also an improbably large additional load for today's trip to France, I had little idea that we would be caught in our own special drama before the exit towards a ferry for Dieppe.

But more of that later. I shall probably entitle it 'busted 2'.

fully warranty?

a bit of a do

A weekend in Surrey, celebrating the lovely occasion of Geraldine and John's Wedding.

We arrived on Friday evening for the rather action packed weekend and I promised to load a few of my pix for family and friends.

short term obsession

As if I don't already have enough to do today, I managed to let an idle thought slip into my head, alongside all the PowerPoint charts and general bizstuff that was supposed to be there.

I could nearly blame a fellow blogger or or two for getting me onto this train of thinking, but I realized early this morning that my brain was loose and susceptible to random pointless wanderings when I started pondering whether carpenters line up the screw heads when they fit a door handle.

So my short term obsession is to build a handlebar clip for my bike that will let me fix a camera to the front. Some of you will have seen my prior experiments like juice-cam, starbucks-coffee-cup-cam and the various commutercam and carcam models that I've built to record journeys.

But I've never got around to a decent bikecam, instead preferring to stick a cellphone in a handy pocket, film a journey and then delete it in disgust.

I don't have time to do this right now, and the whole of the weekend is a Social Occasion, so I'm stuck with lusting after this Instructable $1 project until some time next week.

There will be footage.

a pannier of mail arrives

Our postman, Colin, turned up today with the mail which wasn't delivered whilst we were on vacation.

I knew it was a couple of days late arriving, but I'd talked to him once before about what happens when someone puts the mail on hold with that special service.

In our case, the domestic mail after a couple of weeks is several kilos, so he prefers to deliver it when he has his bike with the panniers.

It was fine by me and I'd already got a mental note that if it didn't arrive by sort of today, then I'd swing by the sorting office.

Indeed, it was around half a metre high and I could fully understand the pragmatics of his approach. Needless to say, once stripped of envelopes and the general marketing blurbs, it soon reduced to a rather more manageable quantity.

anotheronebitesthedust

Another meeting bit the dust this morning.

That's three this week.

I expect is a function of the season, where most people are too busy dreaming in full colour to be fully on top of their monochrome work schedules.

Its easier when the sessions are by phone (two of the three were) so I've not yet travelled anywhere to what has been a cancelled session.

"Touch wood"

I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw

Day Two back at work today and I'm still holding onto the holiday spirit so that nothing will phase me. I was soon into some meetings with mainly folk from the Nordic countries, for whom their earlier June/July vacations are already a month past.

Then I noticed another northern meeting (this time to the North West, around Liverpool) slipped into my calendar for tomorrow. I decided to drive there late today, and booked a last minute non-refundable hotel room so that I'd be ready for tomorrow morning. That was at around 11:00, after we'd confirmed the meeting was to go ahead.

By 11:38, a little cloudette appeared as our contacts suddenly realized they had another urgent appointment and blew out the meeting - by email. I'm probably too sensitive, but feel this breaks some kind of meeting etiquette on at least a couple of levels.

Naturally, other demands have already filled in the time, so I decided to keep my relatively cloud free blue sky thinking for a few days longer.

(yes, Shakespeare. Hamlet.)

uncrushed by the wheels of industry

Back in't smoke today, celebrated with a trip to the office ultra early and picking up a prime parking spot. I seem to have side-stepped the effects of time zone changes, although I sometimes wonder if it's partly because I spend so much time working with the USA in any case.

Tonight, as an example, I thought my last meeting would be at 20:00, but it was then cancelled and replaced with a different one at 20:30. 'I thought you were based in the States', came the explanatory email later. Luckily, the replacement meeting gave me a chance to drive home in the gap, so I'm now feet up sipping tea before the 20:30 call starts.

So contrary to usual post holiday situations, I don't feel as squashed as the yellow stikman graffiti art which I've been noticing on some pedestrian crossings.

hot foot to the UK again

Nikki-ann commented about the shadowy blueness of the rashbre feet, so today I thought I'd better cover them up if they were going to sidle into another picture.

We didn't just stay by beaches during our trip; sometimes it was mountains, lakes or as evidenced by this one, even tennis courts.

Of course, the feet have been somewhat stationary for the last five and a half hours whilst we flipped back to London and I think there will be more of that whilst I take a snooze to let the soul catch up before re-entering the maelstrom (mailstrom?)

Cod navigation to Logan

Awaking to another beautiful sea view, we decided to round out the trip by heading for the very tip of Cape Cod, before that inevitable moment when we had to turn back towards the airport. A few days earlier we'd been in Cambridge Vermont, close to the Canadian border and considered that to be the most northern point of the trip, so this was a second opportunity to create one of those signifying moments where things flip around.

First a lazy breakfast looking out to sparkling sea, watching the seals amassing on the sand bars and then the final checkout from the timber boarded cottage overlooking the bay.

It was easy enough to follow the Route 6 to Providence and to take in the natural shoreline of the area but more challenging as we turned back towards Boston. Not the first part, where the 6 meandered us back to the mainland nor the next stage where there was still a clear route.

As we approached Boston again, I was reminded of the relative lack of signage and confusing directions which are my experience of American road systems. I guess we are spoilt in the UK with countdown markers, uniform sign style and place names before road junctions. America seems more hit and miss with direction signs and we drifted into some interesting neighbourhoods with indiscriminate double and triple parking along routes with only half hearted street names. I still havn't figured out the way North and South gets used. On the way to Providence (North of Cape Cod), the signs said South. At the end of the route it said North. Heading back, it could have said North (or even South again; it decided to say West).

I was sure we would eventually find Boston (we did - thank you John Hancock Tower) and from there navigated a surprisingly straight route back to Logan airport.

Right now I'm in the lounge waiting for the flight to be called. Next stop Heathrow.