Went for a drive few weeks ago, and only took my good old Canonet QL17 film camera with me.
Despite of the ongoing situation we're free to move around, which is very refreshing.
Local countryside was still few weeks away from turning back to green.
Totally empty roads, so much fun to just cruise around and watch the world. I love roadtrips, and I really need to take the 996 to a longish one. Just have to make sure it's in full health befo... oh, why is the rear moving around alarmingly?
Got my first ever puncture. Oh well. I haven't wrenched the 996 almost at all, oil change is the only task I've performed so far. Luckily previous mechanics didn't over tighten the wheel bolts, so I got the wheel of.
I never ever use factory jacks (it's still common to use it to swap between summer and winter wheels here, sadly), but this one did the job pretty well. There's a flat jacking point with a centering hole on the body, and the jack has a pin to match that, so it's pretty secure. It's also aluminium, but the finish is rather crude. So far the most pleasing OEM jack I've found comes in Audi A2: super light, pleasantly finishe... why the hell am I talking about factory emergency jacks here?
The emegency spare was low on pressure, but I knew a gas station only few kilometers ahead, so I crawled to there. Found the compressor, attached the hose and heard the hissing sound of pressurised air moving. I did what we do in this age, and checked my phone while waiting the pressure to rise from 2 bar to 4.2 or so, which is the factory spec for the spare.
In the middle of my Instagram browsing I realised that the compressor hadn't started yet. Next thing I paid attention was my completely flat spare tire: yeah, the compressor had been disconnected and I had just emptied all remaining pressure from my spare into atmosphere. Bye bye last possible OEM air molecules!
Of course at this point we got a sudden snow fall to cheer me up. Everything was closed, as it was national holiday. Luckily through friend local garage came to rescue, we patched the original tire and I was back on the road mere 45 minutes after. I owe them plenty of beer.
Lesson learnt: instead of always making a point about checking the spare wheel pressure, actually do it.
After that the brief blizzard cleared, and I had a drive through perfect sunset. At this point I slightly missed having color film.
These were shot on Ilford FP4+, which I managed to overexpose enough to get slightly grainy results.
After brief black and white sunset photo session it was time to head home. Quite an adventure for a brief after midday drive.