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A roll of carpet in the road.

I just had to jot down this random experience before it disappered into wherever forgotten thing disappear to.

As I was driving home this afternoon I decided to try out the alternative entry point to my road (the road is going to get dug up and things put in the ground...don't ask me for details, coz I'll have to make them up). As I slowly drove down the gravel (note: temporary road), I spotted a long roll of black carpet rolled up. I wondered why it was there at the bottom of the gravel, but assumed that if it was left there, it should be possible to quite easily drive over it. I was wrong. What happened was that I managed to drive over it with the front wheels of the car, but then the back wheels kind of got stuck on it, and instead of gently driving over the carpet, they dragged it along, and unrolled part of it. This continued until one side of it got stuck at the side of the road. This was all downhill. I tried to reverse, and had a few looks to find creative ways of solving the problem, but my blond little self couldn't manage. To be honest, once I smelt a burnt smell and saw smoke coming up from under the car, I stopped trying.

I took my mobile out and rang my brothers (oh, how grateful I am to have brothers near by when the car gets stuck on carpet). While I was waiting for them I got a bucket of water which I tried to sort of throw under the car (I figured the burnt smell and smoke was probably the car melting the carpet). My vivid imagination, fuelled by many a exploding-car scene on films, made me slightly concerned as to what this smoke could develop into, but after the water had been chucked the smoke stopped. I also wrote a little note "SORRY. Car is stuck, help is on the way. If any questions I'm in number 6", and stuck it under the windscreen wiper. Then I went home to wait (the car got stuck sort of on the roadbit between my and my neighbours house). None of the neighbours seemed to be home, which was nice, coz I felt quite embarrased. I mean, how many people get the car stuck on a roll of road-carpet; in the snow or sand, fine, but carpet???

The end of the story was that 2 of my brothers and one of their friends came quickly to my rescue, and managed to get the car unstuck (I don't now if that's a real word, but the car wasn't stuck any more) and on closer expection only a few bits of the carpet were melted. Their friend very kindly said that when he got a car he'd never lend it to me, to which I replied that I probably wouldn't be attempting to drive over road-carpet should I encounter it in the road again.

The moral of this story is: if you spot a roll of road-carpet in the road, take another route.

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