A Wet Short

I had a rather eventful start to my morning, thank you very much. After happily waking up at the crack of dawn, getting dressed, grabbing a piece of toast and filling up at the station, I merrily continued my journey through to Touchwork in the pouring rain, bemused by the puddles of water that were lying absolutely everywhere. (So much so that as far as I understand, quite a number of important highways and byways needed to be closed thanks to all the flooding!)

Anyway, I reach Muizenburg without much incident but it was here that the gremlins decided to throw a pitchfork into the works – or rather some rather large puddles and a giant crater-like pothole! Needless to say, after dashing through said hidden pothole and countless puddles, my beloved Jetta Jameson decided that enough was enough, and simply turned off the power, leaving me with the choice of gliding gently to the side of the road or wait for someone to bash in me from behind.

And because I’m no tail gunner, I pulled off to the side.

It was dark, it was rainy, I was alone in Promenade road next to the Zandvlei dam and I was annoyed. The starter was definitely still active but the engine simply refused to take and thanks to the big pot-hole that I had literally just hit a few metres ago, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d somehow damaged something rather vital beneath my Jetta. Of course, the other alternative was that all the water simply shorted out something electrical, a more likely scenario, but that doesn’t help when you’re sitting alone in the dark, in Muizenburg of all places.

Grabbing my cellphone I contacted Auto & General’s assist line and despite the verbal notification that they were experiencing a high volume of emergency requests, I was pretty much answered within a couple of seconds after dialling! A pleasant chap by the name of Divesh picked up my call and after a brief bit of verification and description info had passed hands, he’d organised to send out a tow truck that would then drag me the nearest Volkswagen dealership (that happens to be pretty close by in Tokai).

Thankfully at that stage the rain had let up quite a bit and I was able to poke around the bonnet and confirm that everything still looked pretty much in working order and after a couple more phone calls to Chantelle and Rory in order to kill time, I finally managed to turn off the immobiliser and turn the key… and Jetta Jameson painfully roared back into life!

I was saved! All that waiting around had been enough to dry out whatever had caused the fault in the first place!

So after a quick phone call back to Divesh in order to cancel his assistance (and rather let them take on a more serious emergency), I slipped back onto the road and with much glee raced off to the gym where I forwent the workout thanks to time contraint (obviously) and instead just used them as a personal showering spot. Nice.

So needless to say, I was rather pleased to see the light of the office and not the light of the dealership after all! :)