As I'm back in CICD and out of all normal activities and surrounded by crazyness, something special happens every day to make my days unforgettable. Let's just pick one day to describe a so-called normal day here. That's what everybody always asks anyway- just tell me how your ordinary day looks like in CICD. So I'll try to describe and i must give a background story first, otherwise it's just too messy.
So we have a new GAIA team who starts DI course in September (as I did 2 years ago) and it's a crazy team. Seriously... Full of Brazilians, mixed with Argentinans, a Colombian, Hungarians and Russians. I was asked to go to Newcastle with them to help the teacher there to start up the team and be a driver as they don't have anybody to drive the minibus. So I went and instead of agreed 5 days there, I stayed for 2 weeks and to be honest, I feel like a member of this team now. They are crazy, but sweet. Imagine Agustina (Argentinan girl, who is extremely nice, funny and crazy)- I'm in the office, trying to figure out the next day and she comes to the door and says- So, tell me how much you love me.. then interrupts herself and says: Wait, I'll go and take a shower and then you tell me how much you love me... then comes back in a minute and says: no, you can tell me now how much you love me, cuz Jane is taking a shower now... I was in cramps... and so was everybody else around me. And as I brought Agustina to the public already, i will also choose a day description, when I was was working together with her and that was her first day of Door to Door clothes collection as my co-driver (if you could just hear her saying this word with her Spanish accent--aaah).
So first i took the bus with 8 people to take them out leafletting, finished with that, i returned home, changed the bus to a van, took Agustina and 6 maps to collect and we went to work with my favourite Mercedes van. Somehow the new teacher in Newcastle house changed the system of checking oil and water in all cars and instead of drivers doing it, she has a person responsible for this. And this is not up to me to argue, so i expected that the person knows what he is doing. Anyway... to the issue. We just started when Agustina jumped out to pick up a bag and completely forgot about left-side traffic. What did I see in my mirror... she was hit by a passing car as she looked to the wrong direction while crossing the street. Luckily just a bit with the mirror and the car stopped and the woman asked if she was ok and she was, but what a way to start a day...
So we continued collecting and in the middle of first map, my oil lamp started to blink. I told Agustina, that i better drive to the tankstation around the corner and buy some oil, maybe they didnt check this van in the morning. So I did and i stopped at the station, went to buy oil and when I came back I saw, where all my oil was.. on the ground under the van. Hmm.. just in case I didnt add any as I suspected (strange enough) an oil leak. I called the teacher to ask what recovery company we use and she promissed to call them. I checked the time and started to get worried as i had many maps to collect and 8 people to pick up from leafletting areas. While we were waiting for the teacher to call back and let us know, what time recovery comes I noticed that the station is closing and the manager came to me as well and asked me to move my van as the tanker is coming in. Oopsy.. i couldn't do that so we were discussing how and where to move it. So the staff, including the manager of the station were pushing my van aside as it was exactly on top of the filling point.
After receiving a call saying that the recovery comes in an hour... and probably we cannot use the van that day, I started to think how on earth am I going to collect my maps and I remembered that I have a minibus at home, which is only 5 km away or so. So an idea came to me: i run home, take the bus while Agustina is waiting for the recovery and bring the bus and whatever happens to the van, we can continue collecting with the bus. So I did it. I ran home, took the bus, drove back and the recovery was there early, they had checked everything and the problem was a missing oil tank cap. Of course all oil was out and all over the engine... Bloody hell... so they had filled the oil i bought earlier, placed a new cap and everything was fine.. except the fact that the whole engine was oily, but thay said it is ok to continue with that van right now it just needs a wash. So i had a working van AND a minibus. So where to park the bus? I saw a pub and went to ask if we could park there for the whole day. It was OK with them as I explained what had happened and they got a good laugh and offered me some mineral water after my running from Kenton to Fenham and we continued collecting with the van. Of course we couldn't finish before I had to pick up people. So poor Agustina had to wait once again. I parked the van to the Pub's parking, took the bus, went to pick up people, dropped them at home, drove back to the parking, parked the bus, took the van and we continued collecting. When we finished, we were completely exhausted. I took my dear co-driver home and asked Neto to drive me to the parking to pick up the minibus. He couldn't really understand why should the minibus be somewhere else if everybody's at home, but I guess he trusts me and came with me without asking any extra questions.
And of course, When i finally got the bus back home as well.. i got hundreds of questions about the next day, maps, where we should leaflet and who collects in which area.. got to bed after 1 am AGAIN, being sure that noone knows what tomorrow brings... It brought a new chaos, but that's how it is here... One "ordinary" day after another. Hahaa.. P.S. Blue marks on Agustinas arm from the car mirror have healed, my ankle after running got swollen, but has recovered to it's normal size.
