First I asked for a phoneEIt’s about a ½ mile up the road”…”can I buy some time from your cell phone?”…”no, but try that one behind the wall”….”do you have a phone book?”… He drags out this large phone book that covers “ALL of Northern Ireland, and is the most confusing phone book I’ve ever seen. Still at step one “Are you sure you don’t know of any tow vehicles ? After all of them conferring with each other in Gallic, “No”… Then the best advice came from the corner (it was Louise)“call the police, they have to call a tow truck all the time.30 minutes later, we had our tow truck out front.It was a little challenge but, we have our tow. “Auto Recovery Services came to our rescue. Jim "Jimmy" Scott was there and he took charge, fact is once he heard our story he was “making it happen. Jimmy isn’t a big guy, but he has a big heart, a big truck, (we found out later on he also had a big challenge with our problem. One thing I hadn’t mentioned, we broke down on the Friday heading into the “Bankers Holiday" and that goes through Monday. On top of all that, our ferry from Ireland to England was to leave Tuesday morning at 8:20am. And to top that all off, we were still about 85km or 2 hours away from the docks. Once “Bumble Bee was all fitted to the top of the flat bed of Jimmy’s truck, we were under way. Louise and I in the front seat with Jimmy who is on the phone calling all his contacts. He hadn’t been on the job more than 3 minutes and he had been searching for a transmission..used or new, but used was just about the only chance we had. Now Newry is a city, but has just received that distinction from being a village not too long ago. The fact is, Jimmy has seen a lot of growth in the last few years, and hardly recognizes Newry himself and he has been there for over 50 years. All of the phone calls seemed to come to the same endSorry, it’s the holiday, and they haven’t got anyway to check. Jimmy’s idea then was just to take us to his “yard" and keep trying. Once there we were introduced to the “Scott Family".We met everyone, Jimmy’s wife Christine, the 3 girls, son and the 2 dogs. Jimmy and Christine’s son has joined them in business, and the girls are all in high school and college. Christine had us over to the house for coffee and tea while Jimmy continued to search for a tranny for us. It wasn’t long and he was in the kitchen asking “did we want the good news or the bad?He had found one and it could be installed by late Monday, but it would cost... What do you do ??? Really there is only one thing you can do, and that is to bite the bullet and get on with our lives and our journey. Now, this being Friday night, we had to find a place to stay. I had kidded with the Scott girls that I would pay them to move out to the garage and we would take their rooms, but they declined. Then, the door opens and in comes Paul. A friend of the family, and now we would like to call him one of ours as well. Paul took us out to find a room, and that wasn’t as easy as it could have been, but again, after a couple of stops and a couple of calls made to Paul’s friends, we had ourselves a B&B we could call home for a couple of nights.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
*Locations*
All
*Archives*
November 2016
|