Yesterday morning we put Erica up on ramps to give a few extra inches of room to manoeuvre underneath her. This involved me opening a window so that I could hear Mick as he gave a commentary on placing the ramps and chocks.
I did plenty of wriggling around underneath (anyone else ever created a scale diagram of the underside of their vehicle, or just us?), then we did various other tasks that saw us in and out of her interior. Given the silly-hot temperature, we left all of her rear doors open all day, until tea-time when I decided I’d had enough of contorting myself for one day.
In the evening, Mick was on his way out to tuck her up for bed, when I told him that I’d already closed her doors and all he needed to do was blip her remote central locking (it’s been a few years since we had a vehicle with that luxury feature!). He took me at my word.
At around 10pm or so, we had a monsoonal downpour with a bit of thunder and lightning.
“Did I close Bertie’s locker door after I got the chocks out?” I asked, suddenly worried that if I’d left it open his boot would be filled with water. Mick assured me I had.
My concern about Bertie’s locker was misplaced, as I discovered as I headed out for a run first thing this morning and saw, with some horror, that I’d left Erica’s driver’s window fully open. What a mistake to make on a night that wet*!
A sodden driver’s seat and a puddle on the floor (the bit of floor under which sits her battery compartment) was the result. Poor love! I do hope she doesn’t think this is an indication of how we’re going to treat her.
(*I’m pretty sure we’ve only ever once before left a car window open overnight. It was at least 12 years ago and it lashed it down on that occasion too, giving us a 100% record for open window = heavy rain.)
It's not as bad as than spilling milk. Thst happened in my Yeti a few years ago. The smell was impossible to remove, and lingered to some extent ever afterwards until it went in exchange over a year later.
ReplyDeleteI can report from experience that the smell of sour milk can linger in a car for at least 4.5 years. As you say, at least water doesn't have that effect and it doesn't look like there's any water staining on the seat nor delamination on the door (both of which happened in the previous open-window incident).
DeleteHa! Years ago in Ireland I bought five piglets at the mart and put two into my Landrover whilst selling on the others. And in Amerikay I ran over a skunk. BAD, BAD, BAD,,
ReplyDeleteWe met a woman on the PCT who had left her car at her brother's house in Mammoth whilst she went off to do her section hike. He contacted her a couple of days later to tell her that she'd left the car unlocked and a bear had managed to open the door and get inside. The door then somehow got shut behind it and apparently bears haven't yet worked out how to open doors from the inside. Aside from the destruction as it panicked and tried to get out, it apparently 'got stressed' (as she put it) all over the upholstery. What's a little water ingress in comparison, eh?
DeleteWe went to Jura one Easter. Left the car on the mainland. Got back to discover from a distance some plastic over the driver's window. Had it been smashed? No, the car park attendant had spotted the open window and taped some plastic over it.
ReplyDeleteEverything was dry. Well, it would be, it hadn't rained over the entire Easter break!
What a thoughtful car park attendant (even if the action was redundant in the event).
DeleteI went and knocked on the door of someone down the road from us early one morning when I was out for a run in the rain, when I noticed that all of their car windows were wide open. I got them out of bed, but I think they were grateful (especially as it was a shiny new car). I really hope that no-one noticed that our window was open, rather than that they saw and didn't tell us.