The Repair Begins!

Sometimes, and I mean only sometimes I was wrong.  For the 237,455th time this year, I was wrong.  I thought it would be easy to bring a vehicle up to speed in a country renowned for it's precision Engineering and exactness: Germany.  As I already said: I was wrong.    Clearly the sadistic beast who had owned this before us had not taken the proper precautions by adding two precious materials being water and oil so that our 1973 Bedford would make those lovely little CO2 emitting white puffs of smoke. So I tried my local garages, they have never heard of the car brand "Bedford" before.  The first thing I noticed when I mentioned Bedford to local German mechanics is that they always mull the word over for a few seconds before trying to pronounce it for themselves.  I cannot help crying in laughter at a middle aged man struggling to pronounce two (relatively simple) syllables when this word has won the German word of the year in 1999: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (It refers to a "law for regulating the labeling of beef" and even the acronym requires a PhD in German Phonetic Linguistics in order to pronounce it: ReÜAÜG). I was in trouble.  I had transported the van some 1,200 kilometers from England, where getting spare parts would be relatively easy, well easier than explaining the concept of driving 16,000 kms through countries the Germans have no words for and all in the name of adventure to a German motor mechanic brought up on a lifestyle of Lederhosen, Sausages and Beer.  I was in serious need of some good karma, more vocabulary and a healthy injection of laughter.    I couldn't allow that beautiful van to sit out there and rot with her poor little gearstick sticking out of the hole in the floor like the time I went to the toilet at the pub and forgot to do up my fly.  I had to try harder, think laterally, move outside my realm of thinking and look at it from a different angle.  I may have taken this a little too literally, as I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache, a mouth tasting like I tried to drain all the kegs of Germany into my mouth and a gorgeous German blonde girl. 

 I had to get back to work, I had to figure out a way of sourcing a starter motor for a Vehicle over 36 years old.  I considered doing what the Chinese do when they construct a starter engine; just stomp on some aluminium cans and fashion them into something about the size and shape of a starter engine - but then I remembered this has to travel at least 16,000 kilometers.  So I was back at square one.   I had looked everywhere, even the Czech Republic, who had copied everything from potatoes to itchy bites, didn't have my starter engine.  Fortunately not every part of the vehicle had to be original, we were fortunate to find out that with a little modification - albeit a blowtorch, jackhammer and front end loader - we could fit an Opel starter engine into our baby.  So was the first stage of our modification.   Peace, Love & IScream.