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HELL of a weekend!

To: "Curt Carlson (E-mail)" <carlson@navtech.com>, "MGs (E-mail)" <mgs@Autox.Team.Net>, "Spridget List (E-mail)" <Spridgets@Autox.Team.Net>
Subject: HELL of a weekend!
From: Phil Vanner <pvanner@pclink.com>
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 16:40:33 -0500
Reply-to: Phil Vanner <pvanner@pclink.com>
Sender: owner-spridgets@Autox.Team.Net
An eventful weekend for the poor little Midget. 

First, on Friday evening I'm driving home from work, sky looks very 
threatening. I put the top up and the passenger side sidescreen in. About 5 
minutes later all hell breaks loose. Horizontal rain, 3/4 of an inch in 10 
minutes, lightning strikes within a few hundred yards, 50+ MPH wind, of course 
this is coming at me from the drivers side and the sidescreen is in the trunk. 
I bailed off onto a side-street to present a more-protected side to the brunt 
of the storm when suddenly inch-diameter hail begins hammering down. I know 
what it feels like to be inside of a drum. Good thing these old cars are made 
of pretty stern stuff, as I only picked up a couple of dings, the storm passed, 
then I dragged my dripping self home.

Then on Sunday, the local MG club is out for a rally. My lovely wife is 
navigating, the sun is shining, I saw many friends at the start, seems like a 
good day. Then an unpleasant, all-too-familiar noise starts up from under the 
bonnet. Sounds like a generator bearing. The metallic dust on the housing 
confirms this. This is the replacement for the one that earned me a mention in 
Simon Bosworth's running report in MG World issue #3. Less than a year old and 
it's got to fail publicly again, how humiliating. It's only noisy at low RPM, 
so I drop out of the rally and elect to hop on the freeway for the four-mile 
run home. Well, I've been considering an alternator conversion anyway. 

On the freeway, Darcie suddenly, yells "look out!"  An Altima, obviously 
oblivious to my presence, is doing the "high-speed-three-lane-change" and is 
about to crunch me into the guardrail. I jerk the wheel left (bad idea, 
especially when applying brakes) and before you can say "snap oversteer" I'm 
travelling backward on the interstate in the middle of Minneapolis on a Sunday 
afternoon. Fun! I'm moving in the same direction as the rest of traffic, I'm 
just facing the wrong way. The car is in fourth, clutch is to the floor, so I 
back off the roadway, intact. Now I'm parked in the 4ft wide shoulder between 
the leftmost lane and the guardrail, facing traffic. Since a Midget is a bit 
wider than 4 ft, I'm a little more in the path of the onrushing trucks than I'm 
comfortable with. I'm flicking the headlight toggle switch on the dash to alert 
people that I'm there, and thankfully a large break in traffic finally came up 
and I was able to make a U-turn  into a more conventional highway driving 
attitude. Yikes! Got to get out and Autocross a bit more, letting it get away 
from me like that almost got us killed.

The REST of the weekend was without incident. : )

    

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