todays big adventure

ferny · Aug 31, 2008

I've spent all day driving - for reasons I don't need to go into. But the real fun happened a few hours ago. During the day the Acclaim developed a judder/wobble on at the wheel. On the way home along the M1 (which I was stuck on for over two hours and only moved half a mile and used 1/4 of fuel on despite turning my engine off when I could) when the wobbling started to shake the whole car. All along the motorway cars were pulling over as they broke down. Feeling the car was now dangerous I decided to join them. I helped a guy in a BMW jump-start his car and then I was picked up and taken to the recovery place in Hemel. Gotta say the guy who picked me up and the bloke later on who came to collect me were great. Anyhoo, turns out a front tyre was ****ed and he said it was probably from the **** speed bumps I'd been going over in Barnet. The tyre had bulged along one half of its tread in a very odd way. On with the spare and I drove him - over five hours after starting the 20 mile journey.

So right now I'm sitting down typing this as I eat a can of "big breakfast" to fill myself as the last time I ate was at 7am and the last cup of tea I had (in fact, the last drink) was 14 hours ago.

Here's the car on the back of the lorry through the window as we went along the M1. Very poor photo.

Antarctican · Aug 31, 2008

Dang, that's a 'bad day', for sure! Sorry to hear it

Hawaii Five-O · Sep 1, 2008

why were so many cars breaking down?

ferny · Sep 1, 2008

No idea. Some had gone into the back of others and others just simply died. We passed five broken down cars in the space of 200m.

I guess it didn't help that the exit at j8 was under four feet of water and the brilliant people doing the M1 widening felt it a good idea to put it down to one lane at the same time.