HoremWeb

Thank you very-very much!

Oh, am I invisible? Well, it might be seem like that... Last few weeks brought tons of deeds to do and I was AFK for a while. Monday evening I got a phone call that Tuesday morning I have to drive to Arezzo, do some business and return in a day or two. My brother had to go but his car had a coolant leakage. Mine is 21 years old and not really suitable for such a long ride so we took his Merc to a mechanic who checked it, fixed a tube and told us this is safe now. Just as we crossed the country the car stopped for too low coolant level... We thought about what to do and continued to Trieste and I booked a rental car on the go. At Trieste Airport it turned out that the last step was failed and there is no car for us. Not any at all, at any of the six or seven car rental services... One of our friends and business partners tried to help us. He took us to his mechanic to fix our car and give a courtesy car, a brand new Land Rover Evoque. Whithin a mile it warned us about a puncture. (It clocked just about 1000 miles before.) We sorted out that there was no puncture but a little drop of pressure, so went down from Vicenza to a bit beyond Florence and back and it was the fine part. We doubled the mileage of the Evoque Next day the mechanic told us that they couldn't find the leakage. Water escapes somewhere but there is no trace where. Either they keep the car at the shop for two more days (the further checks needed several heating up/cooling down cycles) or we try to drive home and top up the coolant in every 140 miles or so. He gave us a gallon of distilled water that we put in front of the back seats and went for it.

After 150 miles we checked the level and everyting was fine. After 25 more miles the coolant dropped beyond the minimum mark—thanks to God at a filling station. I took the bottle from the footwell of the back seat and it was almost empty. Two thirds soaked the footwell carpet… We had to wait the engine cool down a bit to open and refill the coolant, then went on in a severe traffic jam. After 15 miles we had to stop and fill it again, now in the complete darkness on a full motorway, at a really tight emergency lane while trucks passed by inches from the car. This was a near-death experience We tried to call some car mechanic friends at home and one of them suggested that we should keep our speed low at 70 miles or so, stop AC and any heating or cooling in the "office" and give it another try. But as we started again the windscreen started to get fogged, therefore had to roll down the windows a bit that was a bit cold and very noisy. My brother planned to use the plug-in hybrid drive chain's electric part if we meet the problem again but when the coolant level went down, the car disabled the electric motor (perhaps because of the cooling of the batteries). So, we tried to keep our heads low, also the speed in the hectic traffic and listened the wind with one ear and each other with the other one To our big surprise we did about 300 miles this way when we had to stop again to take a rest. When we wanted to continue the low level warning turned up again. This way we realized that we ought to keep the car in motion. That was fine until we reached Budapest but those funky red lights you know... Somehow we run some of them just when they turned to red and got over a few by slowing down before them and catch the green while the car still rolled. But as we arrived to the office to unload, the last traffic light catched us with red and a police car parking on the other side. So we did the few last yards with the warning sign on and engine in service mode. You can imagine that it was too much adventure for a single week and this is why I just disappeared for this week
(Previous week involved lots of work and I did a workshop to some beginner photographer friends about taking pictures of motion and toying around with flash lights—I will put on some images they did. That was a fantastic experience. There are a person or two on every workshops who knows better, wants to do something different, or simply just taking others' time. This time everybody worked together and even continued after the official time ended. That was so uplifting!)