Monday, June 13th, 2005

After 48 hours of fat loading, my starting battery had bubbled itself to a strength just sufficient to start the diesel engine even when cold. The other batteries had not even nearly come back to their original capacity. The engine, though, had nicely overcome the initial clogging of its filters and tubes, and had started to run amazingly smooth on all cylinders.
On Monday evening I took the curves down through the steep valley out of the mountains to head for Lyon Gare Part Dieu where my friend and fellow philosopher Bert Kerkhof would arrive by high speed train from Paris at midnight. At Grenoble, it starting raining cats and dogs, and this would remain until the next morning. Since I was told this station was in Lyon North, I took the Northern circular road to find, after only one small error (but even small errors cost you 15 minutes in the Lyon spaghetti structured highway system) a road reassuringly stuffed with signposts "Gare Part Dieu" that I saw in the midnight dark behind my screen wipers on maximum speed. I had just concluded to be at less then 500 m from the station when the four lane highway suddenly went down steeply to dive under a viaduct of 2.4 meters. The cabin I was pulling was 3.20. Fortunately, I saw the problem through my wet windows, and drove slow enough to even stop in time on this steep down slope that the rain had turned into a fast streaming river of several centimeters deep. I guess only few readers need to be informed that those cabins are not built to survive in any meaningful sense a collision with a concrete structure at 2.40 m.

I have often been ridiculed for having mounted an illegal yellow flashing light on my car. Though my main reason for doing so had been to get away unpunished with freely parking in European city centers at the many construction sites you find there, this was not the first time it came in handy for its genuine purpose: in the midnight downpour, the surrounding story buildings flashed up in bright orange, and a traffic jam starting to form behind me (situation 1 below).

Driving up in reverse was no option since light moveable cabins like mine have no way to unblock their automatic brakes, and the pressure of the steep down slope had put them on. For a U-turn the two lanes were not wide enough, and the lanes for other direction were blocked by a crash barrier. I disconnected cabin and car, drove the car with hazard and flash lights in the wrong direction up to the start of the down slope, and blocked the whole road left and right (situation 2). My professional gear and looks made the drivers in the traffic jam resign in the situation. The cabin was now on its hand brake, with wheels blocked. Carefully releasing the handbrake with only the left wheel blocked made the down slope turn the cabin 90^o to the position of situation 2 above, in which of course no brakes are needed. No space nor a position to reconnect car and cabin directly, so I did it with a 3 meter rope. Since pulling would now make the cabin go backward at first, thus hitting the concrete side wall of the tunnel, I now blocked the right wheel at the rear and pulled to arrive at position 4.
Now it was time to go up to the traffic jam to indicate that one lane was free. Slowly and curiously the midnight rain drivers passed my train. The last one stopped, opened his window and said: "Vous n'tes pas dans le bons sens l!".

He should not have done that.

First of all, I misunderstood him to say I was out of my senses. I am not going to repeat what names I called him, but after he replied he was only advising me I realized he had only said that I was standing in the wrong direction.
I terminated my stream of swearing by something in French that resembles "F. off", and the poor fool disappeared in the rainy dark.

The slope was to steep for the cabin handbrake to hold on its own, so I had to block both cabin wheels to release the tension of the rope and connect to the hook. But is was strong enough to prevent me to drive up with that brake on. After my clutch plates started to smell ugly, I got aware of my omission, unleashed the cabin hand brake, parked the cabin in the first side road and drove to the station to find, two hours to late, my friend, almost as wet as me, kicked out of the long closed railway station.