A great five minutes

This weekend we planned on going on a birding trip down south with some friends. We were to meet them at 6:30, which entailed us leaving the house at 4:30 (AM!!!). We went down to the car and the remote wouldn’t open it. Shaul went upstairs for the other key and that also wouldn’t open the car. Once we worked out how to get the manual key out of the remote (we have a Prius), we could get into the car but not start it. It was totally dead.

So we phoned up the friend we were supposed to pick up and others we were supposed to meet and cancelled our participation in the trip. We then waited until 7:30, phoned the Toyota garage who told us not to touch the battery but to be towed in (he said that you don’t touch a Prius). Our insurance company wouldn't agree to this and a technician came out and started the car with leads. We then drove to the garage where they changed the special battery. This took nearly one hour as it is located in a very difficult spot in the car. Luckily the battery was still under a partial guarantee, and we only had to pay 50%. So we became NIS 605 poorer but drove off with a brand new battery for our hybrid.

The upside of this is that because I am now self-employed, two-thirds of my car expenses are recognized, and I also get back some of the VAT. So our day was pretty boring, and not what we had planned, but then I heard rolling thunder getting closer. Eventually it reached us and it also started raining. I went and stood on our sheltered balcony and then suddenly the heavens opened and it absolutely poured down for five minutes. It was such strong rain, that I got Shaul to come out and we stood there together and just watched this (for us) rare phenomenon. The rain hit the dry earth and the smell was heady. For those of you reading this outside Israel, we have had a terrible drought this year and there was no rain in November; we had a few minutes of light rain early last week, and c’est tout. So those were my great five minutes, which I would have missed if I had gone birding.