A weekend spent in the company of cars

2 consecutive days of my valuable weekend were wasted on different tasks of unusual situations where our means of transportation was severely impaired.

It all started Wednesday night when my friend, let's call him Lloyd, suggested that he'll pass by me to check the facilities in our new gym that we joined through a group plan from work. The problem with us or me is that I somehow get possessed by "Harry" whenever we guys are together and we end up being Harry & Llyold in "dumb and dumber". What would usually take a sane person with an average IQ 15 minutes to reach took 45 minutes with us. And this is what you should expect when you miss the SAME exit 4 times.
The drama started after we got there. For some absurd reason, LIyold locks the car and leaves keys inside. After few unsuccessful attempts, Llyold leaves to seek help from the streets leaving me alone staring at the powered vehicle daydreaming about scenes in the movie "cars" before it turned to a nightmare of scenes where this vicious Hyundai accent rental turned into one of those evil machines in "Transformers" and started hunting and devouring me alive.

Being impatient, I decided to try opening the door by unlocking the key lock with, ehem remember I was possessed by Harry, a toothpick. :S. So here I am, I was this guy (possible hijack) who is looking left and right and carefully playing with the lock trying to open it. I was a bit anxious that somebody would catch me of a burglary attempt. I am surprised that alot of people passed by me and didn't bother to help or question my possible intention of jacking the car.

My tooth pick went all the way before it broke; which is worse. What was I thinking? It is made of WOOD and this is how I jammed it. So now we have 2 problems; Opening the car and the issue of fixing the lock because the key can't go in anymore because of the wooden tooth pick stuck in it.

Minutes later, help arrives in the form of a tow truck driver who has the necessary tools of a long iron wire that's arched at the end. he opened the car in no time. Thank God we didn't listen to that lunatic security guard who suggested breaking the window to open the car. Poor guy. He was using us to find some excitement in his boring job. We hanged out for the rest of the night but we still have the car lock issue to handle.

Next day, we went out for lunch before I got an urgent call from my boss to meet me on my weekend day. After I finished my mini-meeting, we went out for lunch in the area around my workplace where hygiene is not a factor in the restaurants around. It took us 2 hours of extensive searching before we gave up and settled for a fast food restaurant.

The next 8 hours were not exciting at all. We went from south of Jeddah to its north for maintaining the car. The mechanist fixed the lock in half an hour and had to keep the car for the next 4 hours to fix the rear bumper that was damaged in an accident my friend had a week ago. Rental offices are a pain in the neck if you unfortunately get to an accident.

We had some time to kill. We met up with my other friend who was around the area in another garage "tuning" his car, changing some pipes, pumps an air filters and many things that I don't want to know about tuning cars. The heat, humidity and the toxicity gases of exhaust pipes have put my body to a dormant state where I was physically and mentally incapable of engaging in any form of conversation; especially since we had to sit outside during Ishaa and Maghrib prayer (note: for those who don't know KSA, all the shops close at prayer times. Whether you are a Muslim or none, you are destined to roam the streets till prayers finish).

Personally, I couldn't accept spending most of my weekend time going from a garage shop to another to be sweated and greased. At least, we got to entertain ourselves to go to a unique coffee shop that plays the latest DVD movies on more than a dozen 69 inch monitors scattered all over the coffee shop where each is surrounded by a 5.1 sound system. It was an original idea since cinemas are not available in KSA. The best part about it is that they had those Friends Chairs. :D. They ensure a high comfort level during DVD playback of the movies played like "shooter" or selective chapters of Madonna's world tour, and Shakira's touggr. Yet I'd never recommend sitting on those chairs while watching horror movies like a sick silly movie called "Dead Silence" where a possessed doll kills people. How stupid can the storyline get. I had 2 moments where I literally jumped out of my chair and the chair recoiled back at me. It definitely hurt my back. I gave up on the movie half an hour later and focused my attention on the laptop screen of the guy sitting on the table next to us. He was playing video files of Grendaizer. I never imagined that I'll ever get to meet new people over Grendaizer. Hehehe

So cars, cars and more cars. Cars are a pain in the neck. I say that and I still don't own a car. I wonder what'll happen if I get my own.