Bang!

I was at work yesterday morning, covering someone who was away. Wendy had been intending to come up to Ballarat on the train during the afternoon. She only lives a 20 minute drive from the surgery and it seemed silly for her to take the trains when I was close by with a car.

I left work at lunchtime and went to pick her up. This was complicated by my sat nav wanting me to turn right where there was a clear No Right Turn sign. I turned left. The sat nav was determined that I should go back to that intersection and turn right!!  I didn't. I did make it to her house, eventually.

I was pondering whether to get fuel at the Ballan service station, the Warrenheip service station or whether I perhaps had enough to get fuel today at my local service station. I was overtaking a car going up the freeway at Pikes Creek Reservoir. It's quite a steep hill and lots of vehicles slow down as they go up it. There's also a truck lane. And often very fast cars in the overtaking lane.

As I went up the hill, in the overtaking lane, I saw something in the middle of my lane. I wasn't sure what it was but it was big and metal. A ladder perhaps? I swerved into the emergency lane.

BANG!!!!!!!!!

Wendy says I only just clipped the object and oh-so, oh-so nearly missed it. Alas, I didn't miss it and it shredded both the inside tyres. I managed to get into the truck lane and limped up the rest of the hill. I was hoping to get to the proper lay-by about a kilometre along the road. But just after the top of the hill there's a pull off, which was used by construction vehicles when the road was being remade. It meant that Ziggy the Jazz was well off the roadway, even allowing for trucks coming up the hill.

I rang the breakdown service. Object in road. Two tyres shredded. Two passengers. Blue Jazz, just up, along from the reservoir. She sad she would send help. Wendy and I stepped over the safety barrier. It was a lovely day. mid- to high 20s. Light breeze. Sunny.  Eagles flying overhead. It would, of course, have been better if we had been sitting in a pub's beer garden rather than by the side of a freeway, but you can't have everything.

After talking to the breakdown service I contacted Lindsey so see if she could get Ross to go to their place and feed Rupert and Hugo, which had been on my list of things to do. Then I went to call the police, to tell them about the large object in the middle of the freeway.

At which point - a police car turned up. Apparently they had had lots of calls alerting them to the object, which they said was a large, heavy metal ramp which had probably fallen off the back of a truck. They had moved it to the side of the road. They checked to see if we were ok. Looked at the tyres. Decided that we were probably safe enough where we were and went away.

The breakdown service turned up after about 30 minutes. The dispatcher had sent a car to change my tyre. We needed more than that. I only have one spare tyre. He arranged for a tow truck to come. And 30 minutes after that a tow truck turned up and took us back to Bacchus Marsh.

It can be a challenge getting up into a tow truck when you are 67 and not in the habit of scaling mountains. There is no chance we would have got Stella into it!!

The tow truck driver took us to the Bacchus Marsh railway station and then took Ziggy to their yard. The tyre place had closed for the night.

A train to Ballarat turned up within 5 minutes or so. We settled in, got to Ballan. And there we stopped. The train was broken. We all had to get off, troop over the pedestrian bridge to the other platform and catch the next train. Fortunately there wasn't too long a wait.

We took a taxi home when we finally reached the Ballarat railway station. There are buses but by that time of the evening they only run out my way every hour. I wasn't going to wait that long.

We finally walked into the house at around 7:15, about 6 hours after I had left work.

Next time I am asked to cover a shift at the surgery, I think I will borrow Lindsey's NO button and stay at home.

Poor Ziggy. Brand new tyres - shredded 😫