Oh Reims!

So the next morning we picked up Mike 2… 2 hours late because we thought that he got in at 10 like we did. Whoops. Then we found a France map  put a little fuel in and set off towards Bern, Switzerland.

On our way we figured we should grab some food and a Europe map so we stopped in Reims, France at a Carrefour to get it. We got tons of nutella (Which is about a quarter of the price of peanut butter), jam and bread as well as a super expensive Europe atlas. Unfortunately, when we tried to leave our sweet new car wouldn’t start because apparently GAZOLE doesn’t mean gasoline. It means diesel. Which therefore means that we didn’t put that in our diesel engine minivan and instead put SP95 aka gasoline. Ha. We’re screwed.

So we didn’t even have this van a day before doing something drastically wrong. Whoops. So we pondered ideas for a little while because we really did not want to have to pay for the tow truck (70 euro) let alone the actually cost to flush the system out. So we scoped out of the supermarket for siphoning tools and for a telephone to call the car company but found neither so we decided to head into city centre to find some wifi. But first we pushed the car to a gas station and put a little bit of actual diesel in but it wasn’t enough. So the plan was to look up stuff about running diesel engines with gasoline and the low down on siphoning tanks and what not. But of course the one place we found that had wifi wouldn’t work on my computer so we left. Stopped at a garage and played pictionary with the mechanic but he finally said he couldn’t repair it. So we went back to our car while texting Mike 1 back in Ireland to see if he could look up some options for us. And he said you needed a 90-10 diesel-gasoline ratio for it to work but seeing as we had a 25-75 ratio and a completely full tank… that wasn’t going to work. Hooray.

Then we got the car running but if we hit the accelerator it killed the engine so we just left it running in hopes that it would just burn off all the gasoline. Meanwhile Patrick and I went in town again to search for siphoning tools and what do ya know? An internet cafe like 2 blocks from us. Only we spent two hours looking for one and couldn’t find it when we needed it. But we got our tools and went back and set up our siphoning kit but had an epiphany that we could just drive the car as far as possible (now that the accelerator didn’t kill it) and just get towed if necessary. So we did it! And drove off. (but not before putting some diesel in some bottles just in case)

 

Not Orange Soda

We pulled off at a little grassy area along the road in France and slept since we had wasted a whole day in Reims but wanted to make up time. Jeez la wheez.