major oopsEdoops....
we picked up the car...kindly being lent to us by omar, the dude we are doing the apt swap with, and realized the gas tank was empty..neither of us had ever driven around bcn before so it took some time to find a fill up station..but after about 20 minutes we succeeded in finding a petrol station on diagonal.
feeling glad+proud we carried on for about 15 minutes, headed towards sagrada familia, so i could get my bearings of where i lived with the papabubble kids in '03..then the car stopped. dead. at an intersection. completely immobile. perhaps the car battery?
some kind gentleman helped us push the car to the side and then gave his advice about how to restart, but to no avail..he thought it was maybe the carberator..but then again i used to always say there was something wrong with the tranny when i'd bring my volvo in..just cause it sounded good, and like i maybe knew what i was talking about..so he might have been bullshitting..
anyhoo, there we were, pulled over on a teeny tiny side street, with just enough room+nary a clue as to what to do. xabi found an insurance number in the glove box so we called+they said in about an hour a truck would come. lucky for us there was a little cafe on that street so we watched the full moon rise over the city while we waited..
finally he showed up+xabi ran over to find out the dilly.
we had put gasoline in a deisel car.
shit.
but how the fuck was i supposed to know?! i've never been in a diesel, driven a diesel and thus have certainly never filled up a diesel. and xabi doesn't have a licence so he hadn't done any of the above either.
so off the little VW went into el noche.
we picked it up a couple days later+it was all cleaned up and filled up with the right kind of fluids...i was wowed by the outfit of the guy on the left, not only was he wearing a totally rad jumpsuit but he had bejangles around his neck..a charm necklace! with a horseshoe and wishbone and various other divine trinkets..so i took my first (+only thus far) street style shot of the two mechanics.
we thought the story would end here.
but no.. after a lovely but slightly exhausting trip up to maricosca (the street signs here leave much to be desired!), we got back to bcn and had a bit of a time finding his underground hidden garage..but we did and were feeling like finally we'd conquered the streets. then we exited out the door that said salida-exit..but it was a dead end. we got trapped inside a weird and certainly locked storage building. now, i have to say, this is a feeling i've not had and hope to never again...feeling completely trapped from the inside and the out.. so after going up an down all the stairs and exhausting every possible option, we were left with no other but to call the police.
after a few cigarettes and a little jane eyre, they showed up. we passed them the keys (through slats in the one door to the to the street) to open the two locked doors into the garage..where they would then have to open the salida door to let us out. so they did. but then guess what. they couldn't get the main doors opened either!! so the 4 of us are all looking rather panicked..or xabi +i looked that way, while they looked kind of irritated that these two kids had trapped them inside too..they pushed and pulled, opened the mechanical box attached to the door..nada.
but we finally got out. turned out, there was a button that opened the garage door but it was unmarked and unlit...so we left and were finally able to get on the metro to go get some food...
anyhoo, that's the story of the car.
it was some kinda wild ride to be sure.
