Somehow, the system works

As a man with a big head who knows big weeks in football, even Eddie McGuire would concede it's been a big week ... for me and my XF Falcon. It all started back in October 1984 and 1986 respectively, but that's a little off track, so we might as well skip to last Monday night, 7 short eves ago.

The power went off twice during the night, and I'd woken up and fixed my alarm clock to go off at the right time and everything. Futily, as it turned out. My mum woke me up at 7am to let me know the Falcon had been broken into and I had about 45 minutes until Mum would drive me to my work before heading to hers.

It's no secret that the mid-to-late 80s generation of Falcons are one of the easiest to break into - and most broken into as well. There was another part of the break-in process I wasn't so privvy to. Police sources say a common method of getting the engine started is using the car's oil dipstick in the ignition, like a key. Well, Monday night's thieves managed to balls it up somehow. The theory is that they couldn't get it going, tried push starting it, got thrown off by our neighbours' auto-sensing light (that is always going off in the middle of the night anyway - it shines in the direction of my room) and just got the hell out of there.

We found out about this at 5:30 am, when our neighbour Stuart knocked on our door to get us to move it from where it was left - blocking his driveway. The dipstick was pretty hacked up so we got our mechanic to get a new one ready for us to pick up that afternoon. I'd escaped the whole ordeal - not that it was that bad - pretty much as well as it possibly could have transpired. A scheduled service on Thursday didn't pick up any damage, so we were in the clear. So by the end of the day, I was only down one MagLite torch and less than $5 worth of 5, 10 and 20 cent pieces in the console. I'd had a cheap week before that and had raided the console for Metcard change, luckily. In fact, that was pretty much the final word. Lucky. "Botched car theft special feature --- luckyyyy!"

So you can imagine how gutted I was when I emerged from my room on the cusp of Saturday morning and afternoon and my mum pipes up with "Oh you are home! We thought you'd stayed over last night." It took about two seconds for the cerebral cogs to turn and the penny to drop. Since the car wasn't there, it was - as anyone on The Bill would say - nicked, mate.

News from the insurance company wasn't good. Considering the cops had estimated the car's value on their report as $800, the news that we'd have to pay a $450 excess didn't please me mathematically, or in any other way. The excess was pretty much to cover a 21-day car hire, but it wasn't to be sniffed at. I didn't exactly need the car until work on Tuesday, so we waited out the weekend and would take it from there.

When we were talking about it out to dinner last night, I was amazed how hard my dad took it. He'd taken over the old Commodore when my mum bought "one Toyota Corolla prease", brand new, a few months back, so I didn't think it'd bug him much. I guess he either seriously hated thieves or loved that car as much as I did. I'd been through heaps in my pizza delivery days in that Falcon. It was bloody reliable and in great nick for cars of that age too. I'll probably drive it until it dies!

After a decidedly average sort of weekend, it was a good start to the new week to hear the cops had found it in a quasi-quarry at the end of a half-built court in Ringwood East, roughly out the back of Maroondah Hospital. There wasn't enough petrol in it to get much further, methinks. I caught a nice old Indian man's cab straight out there and picked it up from the waiting officers. Major props to them, it was well worth the speeding fine I "ponied up" for last year. I'm still amazed that the Patmobile was undamaged. A quick bend-and-replace of the dipstick and it was right to go. When I got home, I found out my uni project's team meeting was rescheduled by the RMIT supervisor, so I didn't even have to go to uni in the end either. I even managed to use the time to catch up with project work too!

You'll also be stunned to learn that my glovebox full of mixtapes wasn't touched. This marks the death of the once mighty "cassingle" - if it wasn't already. I should release a double-CD of my iTunes playlists from the weekend and today - one disc called Theft and the other called Recovery. It wasn't all bad though, because I got to take Ben's manual for a spin!

The only thing left now is to figure out my new theft prevention policy. The old one closely resembled "have a shitty car worth bugger all without any pimpin' stereo and no-one should steal it", but I guess I'll have to turn it up a bit. Perhaps a new Club lock, parking in the driveway rather than out the front of the house and a "Driver does not fill petrol tank over 1/4" warning scrawled in black house paint along the side should do it.

This post is in memory of Steve Irwin - a true Aussie champ.