I'm reluctant to raise this since everyone else seems to be deep into
serious and esoteric mechanical adaptations with their vehicles and might
not appreciate a bit of trivial Series engineering, but I installed a
coffee cup holder in my SII today -- and then had to rip it right out.
I don't know what got into me. I should have known better than to try and
gussy up the venerable beast. I can only take comfort from not installing
a CD player.
But I paid for it, big time.
It started when I picked up a piece of bent plastic at a gas station
purporting to be a "universal coffee cup holder", fits all makes and
models. Sure it does.
It took me half an hour of heating and bending plastic and then finding a
place on the dash to wedge it into place.
Job done, I piled the dogs in the back and headed off down the road to the
nearest coffee shop. I don't know about the rest of you but how come you
can't just order a "coffee" these days? Everything seems to have
hyphenated fake Italian names and there seems to be more decaffeinated
coffee for sale than should be right in a coffee house. And the sizes. No
regular, medium or large. Instead, everything is grande, or tall or some
other pretentiousness. I don't recall having to go through this ordering
nonsense in Italy.
Anyhow, I put the paper cup in the new holder and drove off for the
kilometer or so to the dog runs.
I would have sworn before today that that road used to be the pinnacle of
the road builder's art, the finest stretch of smooth driving in the
hemisphere, the sort of dead flat surface that an engineer could check his
Johanson Blocks against. Instead it felt like something a drunken road
digger might have hacked out.
It never occurred to me before, but a Series Land Rover is a very bumpy
riding beast. We hadn't gone through the second gear change before the
plastic top exploded off the cup. Half a second later the first geyser of
scalding coffee shoots straight up and sprays against the
windscreen. Second by second great gouts of skin blistering liquid shot
out of the coffee holder. My sunglasses were coated in it, my right hand
turned numb from the burning, and the Border Collies crowded back against
the rear door, coffee dribbling from their whiskers.
By the time I got to the dog run there wasn't a dry spot in the Land Rover
except for the interior of the Super Grande sized coffee cup.
The cup holder is now out in the trash.
Rick Grant
1959 SII 88"
VORIZO
Calgary Alberta
www.rickgrant.com
_______________________________________________
LRO mailing list
LRO@land-rover.team.net
http://land-rover.team.net/mailman/listinfo/lro
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Dec 13 2002 - 16:52:38 EST