A drive with friends in the country: what could be better? Well… how about not breaking down in the middle of nowhere, and having to walk 45 minutes down the road to get enough reception to call for a mobile mechanic? That’d be somewhat better. Unfortunately, it seems like this occurrence is part and parcel of said country drives with friends. But I can dream.
Obviously, it’s Jethro’s car that’s to blame. If he’d just get the darned thing serviced once in a while… according to him, the problem is living in Mornington, Tasmania. Car service centres aren’t exactly absent from the area, but you’d think it was a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by scavengers from the way Jethro talks about it. Even if that was the case, surely at least one of these scavengers would be into collecting auto parts, and capable of cobbling together a mechanical workshop of sorts.
It’s not like Jethro can’t afford to get his car serviced. He’s just stingy. What he fails to comprehend is that, with the money we spent on the emergency repair, he could have had a routine service thrice over, even in allegedly mechanic-less Mornington. Tyres, needless to say, don’t top Jethro’s list of priorities any more than servicing does, but he could almost have gotten a new set into the bargain as well.
I suppose the rest of us can’t really talk, though. The reason we always go in Jethro’s car, in spite of its questionable roadworthy status, is that he’s the only one who even has a car. That’s the only reason I let him off the hook about how dangerous it is to drive around in a vehicle in that condition. If I had my own car… that’s a pretty big if, though. Perhaps I’d realise that there’s some economic rationale behind Jethro’s approach to car maintenance (or lack thereof).