Big tailback on the northbound A102 about 4pm yesterday, crawling along at 2mph, the trike engine not loving it at all. It gets hotter that a two-bob shotgun and tends to conk out and not restart. And so it was. The traffic was still crawling at 2mph inside the tunnel and the mind’s going “someone up ahead is being a total ******”.
Well, as predicted, my engine stopped about halfway through, red hot, and it was going to need a few minutes before it would start again. There I sat. Then a bloke called Len turned up on an immaculate old CX500 Custom, parked up behind me with his hazards on, asked me what was up, and then went and used the emergency phone, which in the all-new refurbed northbound lights up 3 red lights by the SOS phone. He came back and said they were closing the tunnel and sending a recovery truck.
A couple of minutes later, I tried starting up again and it fired up. Yay! So we scarpered. Came round the next curve in the tunnel, nearly piled into an abandoned car. No driver, no hazards, no SOS lights at the nearest phone, whoever it was had legged it without telling anyone and had probably caused the problem in the first place. Len and I got out of there and stopped for a chat, really good bloke and I thank him enormously for his help. Nice CX too. Who but a biker would have stopped to help?
I have to ask, though, what sort of mentality did the car peasant have just to abandon his vehicle like that? Bastard.