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ok, so  thinking about the posts yesterday about my burning cars it would appear that my car dealer Mickey is indeed trying to kill me. Here’s the story of the first time I dealt with him. This may take some time.

The first car I got from him was a Lancia Delta Integrale a few years ago which I picked up in Stevenage and immediately headed off to a snowboarding holiday in Zakopane, in the Tatra Mountains.

Somewhere in the south of Poland a tyre blew so I parked it up in the 2 ft of snow and set about changing it. At this point I discovered 2 things.
Firstly I'd brought no warm clothes which was a pretty bad idea for a snowboarding holiday and an even worse idea for changing a wheel kneeling in a snowdrift.

Secondly there was no jack. This would not be the last time Mickey would stitch me up with this one.

Back then 24 hour supermarkets were very rare in Poland but as luck would have it I'd just gone past a Tesco (they didn’t wait long after the fall of communism to move in) hypermarket. I decided to head across the snowy, hilly field I was parked next to towards the lights of a small village. As luck would have it, in the centre of the village there was a taxi parked up with the driver asleep in the front seat and once the driver had got over the shock of an Englishman appearing in his village wearing summer clothes demanding he wake up he agreed to drive me to the shop.

After driving along about 5 miles of back roads (much further than I’d thought) we arrived at huge supermarket, one that'd put anything in the UK to shame. So, I bought my jack but then realised I had a new problem. I now had to persuade a new taxi driver who didn't understand a word I was saying to just drive up a road, hoping it was the right road, for an unspecified distance until we hopefully found my car parked up. This was not helped by the fact that I had very few zlotys left and there were very few ATMs around at this time. At the 3rd attempt I found a driver who was willing to go on this adventure with me so we set off in what I hoped was the right direction. 15 minutes later I was not so sure that this was the correct route, I recognised nothing at all, the taxi meter was 3 zlotys short of what I had in my pocket and I was starting to panic a little when in the distance I saw a beautiful sight, my car.

Now changing a wheel in a field full of snow would normally be a bit of a trial but as it turns out this was the easiest part of the trip and I was soon on my way after only a short row with the local constabulary who were less concerned about my plight than they were about my lack of hazard lights.

The next problem wasn’t long in coming, in fact it was about 10 seconds in coming.
As I hadn’t slept for about 30 hours at this point I kinda forget where I was and set off driving on the wrong side of the road, something which was soon pointed out to me by the glaring lights and blaring horn of the coach bearing down on me, I just about managed to avoid it by swerving onto the pavement at the last moment and somewhat shaken continued on my journey now driving on the right. I managed to get about 50 metres up the road before the next tyre blew.

Excellent!!  More, more!!

indeed..Man I love hearing hard luck stories :)

I now had no money and my phone was all but dead but I managed to get a quick call through to my brother, who was already in Zakopane, before the battery went and he knew a taxi driver who lived a couple of hours away who’d be able to come and rescue me. I decided I’d meet him at Tesco as it was warm there so I got ready for the trip.

I kitted up with as many warm weather clothes as I could fit on me including 2 socks on each hand and set off through the snow. Unfortunately the night had now developed into the coldest one of the year at -30 degrees with the wind chill from the gale that was blowing making it effectively -40. I made it about 50 metres before realising  I was going to die of exposure if I continued so turned round and ran back to the car.

I now had the problem that my rescuer was going to be looking for me at the hypermarket while I was up the road sat in my car so I had the superb idea of driving the car on 3 wheels. I strongly suggest that no-one tries this, it really doesn’t work especially in snow so with 1 newly shredded tyre I parked up again, waited and hoped.

The next couple of hours were not too pleasant, every now and again I turned the engine over and tried to get some warmth in the car but the heater wasn’t working properly and the car kept filling with exhaust fumes so I couldn’t do it too often. Eventually I tried  turning on my phone again and had enough juice to pick up a message ‘I have located the vehicle and am continuing to Tesco’. Great news, at least he knew where the car was and would presumably come back once he didn’t find me at the shop.

Thankfully it was only ten minutes later that my saviour Pawel appeared, he had a huge people carrier with comfy seats a working heater and even a Nokia charger, I was in heaven. While I warmed up he got the first tyre to blow from the boot of my car and we headed off to the local town and their 24 hour tyre repair shop. This was a wonderful place, it looked like an old blacksmith’s shop with a forge in the middle which I stood by, continuing to warm up and staring at the flames while they checked the tyre.

It turns out that there was no damage, the problem was caused by tyres suited for an English summer being totally useless in a Polish winter and basically imploding in the cold with no damage to the rubber, so with our newly re-inflated tyre we set off back to the car. When we got there we found that yet another tyre had gone flat.

so when did you work out that you should of picked up for new tires when you had the chance?

err, never did. maybe that would've been a good plan. never really occured to me until just now.

so, back to the story.


Had I been on my own at this point I think I would just have given up and wandered out into the snow ala Captain Oates, luckily though I had the level headed Pawel to look after me. He pointed out that it was unlikely that this one was damaged either, so after he had replaced the shredded tyre with the one we’d brought from the repair shop he wandered off to wave down a tow truck (all the while I sat in the nice warm car, I’m no use in a mechanical situation).

I’m not sure about elsewhere but in Poland all tow trucks carry compressors so we soon had all 4 wheels inflated once again and I followed as we drove to Katowice via a very welcome food stop. My saviour now left me as he returned to his bed after pointing me in the direction of the road I needed to head up the mountain. 30 seconds after he left I’d completely forgotten where he’d told me to go so I ended up driving round and round the city until I eventually found the right road after only a 2 hour delay.

Now I have the challenge of the 2 hour drive up the mountain. This goes off with virtually no drama apart from the 3 times that I fell asleep and nearly drove off the edge, minor dramas compared to the rest of the trip, and so I eventually arrived in the beautiful town that is Zakopane.

I have no idea where to go in town but I have the address so hire a taxi driver and follow him (Pawel has very kindly lent me some money). Along the way I see some people waving at me from the back of one of those touristy horse and carts so I politely wave back. They keep waving though and eventually I realise it’s my mum,  sister-in-law and niece, that was a moment of pure relief as I realise my journey from hell is finally over and I’m back with family.

Mickey’s first attempt at auto-homicide had failed.
   

 rotflmfao ;tightend; rotflmfao ;tightend; rotflmfao

MORE!!!  MORE!!!  MORE!!!

great stuff Gatso - looking forward to the next one!

C. A. F. C.

Super Alan's red and white army!!
:)

 :goodpost: ;iagree; ;yippee;

That's a great story.

it aint finished yet we have the otehr 2 attempts on his life yet

Riveting reading.

Great read got me intrest as soon as you mentioned my Favorite car of all time.

Thought I'd post a pic to help show the folk what a great car the Lancia is (This is a pre evo model)

Regards

M

a great car once you put the right tyres on it. the star of our story was stripped down, back seats removed, full cage fitted and was done in full racing decal by the Martini racing team. we used to get some strange looks driving that around Warsaw, especially when in convoy with the other 2 that were done by the team at the same time. it raced a few times in the Polish rally championships

This must be you then and not Juha Kankkunen

 :respect:


Regards

M