Flat Tire? No problem. We got a new car.

“The right rear tire looks a little low” said Hans as he was unloading our luggage from our rental car.

We had just pulled into the driveway of our Melbourne hosts late Monday afternoon.  Closer examination revealed the head of a large sheet metal screw firmly embedded in the tire.

I phoned the next morning, and the roadside assistance number we had from Thrifty said someone would be there within the hour.  However our hosts were taking us on a sightseeing tour of the city, and then we were going to  Rotary in the evening where Hans was the speaker so…we decided to call back later.  Later turned out to be 9:30 p.m. and at that time the wait was going to be 2 ½ hours…so I decided to call early Wednesday morning.

“Can’t fix that tire,” declared the young fellow after he had replaced the faulty one with the spare.  Which, luckily, was a full sized tire.  The screw was in the shoulder where  apparently it can’t be fixed and so…another call to Thrifty.

“What do we do now?” I asked after I had explained the whole story.

“No problem,” said Thrifty, “we’ll just get you a new car.”   And that’s exactly what happened.

“Where are you heading?” asked the friendly agent, and when told our next destination was Geelong and then along the Great Ocean Road, he put us on hold, phoned one of their outlets along our route and found out they didn’t have a comparable car.  So he contacted another outlet at the Avalon Airport near Geelong where they had a slightly larger hatchback and once we got there, filled out a bit of paperwork, transferred our bags and Bob’s your uncle.  All done.  Quick and easy and no extra cost to us.

Luckily, at the urging of our new friends in Melbourne, we cut short our visit with them  to give us extra time to travel the Great Ocean Road and not rush to our next destination.  This turned out well for us since we got a late start due to the car change, and we didn’t have to go rush.  In fact, we stopped fairly early to overnight in Apollo Bay where we checked into a Best Western with wireless internet.  Hah!  Though apparently other guests have been able to connect to their network, we CANNOT get a connection yet again.  It must be our damn computer but we can’t do much about it while we travel so we’re continuing to limp along with only sporadic connections.  It’s seriously annoying. 

Oh well, tomorrow’s another day and though the weatherman forecasts more rain and gray skies, maybe he’ll be wrong.  (He wasn't!  The rain in Mount Gambier tonight has been of biblical proprtions).

And maybe tomorrow night I can connect the laptop to the internet at our new hosts’ house.  (YES!!!  I am pathetically grateful when I can get wireless internet connection and I have it here in Mount Gambier.)