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April 10, 2006

Cars!

So, we live in the city center and we don't need an actual, you know, car. We walk. A lot. We cycle (although I personally am not currently cycling since that horrible, nasty person with the metal cutters ruthlessly cut the chain lock and stole my bike).

We can also take the tram or the metro or the train. When it works (which I have to say it generally does over here) public transport really is a viable and good option. Yay, we're helping the global warming status quo, which is good.

But every now and then it's nice to have a form of self transportation more powerful than legs. Like a car. Like the time (oh, last week) when Oh Patient One and Teenager #2 and I went to visit our family in the UK...

We hired the car a day early so that we could run a few additional errands. Errands, namely, involving big packages transportable in a car, when one (or should I say two?) doesn't usually have a car. A little trip to IKEA in Delft (where the famous blue and white crockery with windmills on it comes from).

So, we went to the car rental place. All is good. At least we think it is...

Me ( as we seatbelt ourselves into the car) : "We know everything we need to know about this car, and we're good? Right?"

Oh Patient One (in the driving seat, due to unforseen navigational incidents to IKEA - namely, I have not quite memorized the way due to the complicated "In Dutch" Internet instructions, and he knows the "general direction" of the way. And he also knows "the short cut".) "Yes."

I sink into the seat and decide to Admire The Countryside...

Many years later...miraculously, we arrive at IKEA. (No, I am not going to tell anybody how many u- turns or 'short cuts' or whatever else this journey has thus entailed. It's a private kind of suffering kind of thing.)

So, we park the car in the multistory parking lot at IKEA. And now the car will not self lock at the click of an automated click from the, you know, automated clicky thing that all modern cars are provided with on the key ring.

We both have a go, but this car really doesn't respond to the infra-red clicky, lock-me-now-against-the-whole-world thing. The doors open when you try to open the doors. Even though we have tried to lock them with the clicky thing.

So we open all of the doors, and we open the trunk, and we open the gas access thing, and we slam them all shut again. But still the car will not lock.

And then we do it all again and still the car will not lock.

Me: "Let's read the operational instructions."

Oh Patient One (very nearly at the end of His Patience, which is unusual for him): "Okay. I give in. Open the glove compartment and hand me the instructions..."

I know at this point that he is stressed. He just NEVER reads instructions. He usually just wings it (and, I have to say, gets there on common sense, anyway.)

We both read the instructions (which are in Dutch, and Icelandic, and Turkish, and Croatian, and in Every Other Language Except English). The car itself beeps to us. In Dutch. We understand that the "back opening thingie is not quite closed and will beep at us henceforth ( we can understand, but we don't understand why the car is still beeping at us because we closed the "back opening thingie is not quite closed" thing.)

Anyway, more years later we decide to drive back to the car rental place. Amidst constant beeping of the "back opening thingie is not quite closed" thing. It beeped. All the way back to Rotterdam.

So, we arrive back at the car rental place, and we told the guy about the "back opening" thingie. And the beeping.

Who knew that the trunk WINDOW had its own open/close option on the keyring? Yeah, the window on the trunk opened and had its own opening thingie (although the trunk itself, oddly, didn't)...And who even knew that trunk windows even opened separately to the trunk?

Good thing we hired the car a day early, or what would we have done on the ferry when the car started beeping at us?

Oh, please tell me we are not alone in our technological misunderstanding!

PS. We went back to IKEA and bought wonderous CD racks. And then we took a "short cut," and years later we finally got home...

Posted by Michelle at 2:08 PM | Comments (3)

Comments

Posted by: ZaZa at April 15, 2006 11:19 PM

Posted by: Michelle C at April 17, 2006 2:09 PM

Posted by: as28334 at June 4, 2006 5:33 PM