Spanish cops discover illegally parked flying car Cops on the island of Gran Canaria have sensationally discovered evidence of super-advanced hot hatch technology in the form of a flying Daewoo Matiz. Las Palmas police were called in to investigate the illegally parked vehicle on Monday, and reported: "This is what they call 'high-class parking'." A fireman scales a ladder …
Reminds me of the time some of my rugby playing mates popped into the local supermarket to pick something up, and when they got back to the cars, someone in a mini [1] had double park in front of one of their cars, blocking them in.
[1] This was the 80's, so a proper mini, i.e. it was actually a small car, rather than the bulbous large things they brand mini's now.
They were in a rush, so rather than waiting, they simply picked up the car and carried it out of the way.
After driving their car out of the space, and being the nice guys they are, they duly picked up the mini again and put it into the space that they had just vacated.
Okay, they weren't that nice, they did put the car in sideways!
Did a similar thing to an acquaintance's old Corsa... He could be a big headed twat, so we thought it'd be a laugh to pick up his car by the rear arches and turn it sideways in his dad's drive, sandwiched between a fence and the house wall.
His reaction was a confused mix of apoplectic and WTF just happened, switching between the two every few seconds.
Needed about a 300 point turn to get out :D
Good times...
I've lost count of the number if times I've heard either this story or one very, very like it. I wonder whether it's one of those urban legend things or whether people have a supernatural ability to detect a car carrying rugby players and know they should double park there to ensure the story's survival.
And if the latter wouldn't that make the story some kind of parasite preying off the suggestibility of the puny humans?
Rosie.
"I wonder whether it's one of those urban legend things"
A lot of Rugby players, a lot of idiot parkers, the Venn diagram must intersect fairly often.
When I was at U a Morris Minor got placed on the flat roof of a building over a weekend. But it was actually done by dismantling it (removing wheels, engine and gearbox) before lifting, and then replacing them in situ, which made it a lot more practical. Or so I am told.
The Dean indicated that there would be no repercussions if it returned the way it had come, because he was a philosopher with a sense of humour.
It's not an urban legend. The point is with small light cars that sooner or later someone you know will try it and the sports team is likely strong enough to suceed.
Fiat 500s were a favourite for being carried up several flights of steps in my high school (usually deposited on the landing outside the teacher in question's classroom) and at one point a mini managed to make an appearance on the roof of a 12-floor building at my local polytechnic (not as difficult as it sounds - the freight elevator went to the top floor and it was a quick carry from there to the roof. The sods responsible for that one lifted it on top of some ventilation kit so it was more visible and damaged both the car and building services in the process.)
The nasty one was where drunken rugby players at the university sports bar picked up a bunch of small cars parked outside and set them all sideways on the building's services driveway down the side - which had a 2 foot deep ditch on either side of the driveway. Much hilarity and they all went home. Sometime later the netball players who owned the cars couldn't get out and one dropped both wheels in the ditch trying to get out. From that day forwards the services driveway gate was firmly chained shut at all times (which only led to people parking in front of it, then getting towed for blocking a fire lane.)
It's not as far as I'm concerned.
When I was (much) younger, the road outside our house was due to be resurfaced, so there were big No Parking signs and cones all along one side, but this didn't stop some idiot from parking their car in the way.
I watched the workmen "bounce" the car across the road, do their resurfacing and then, later on, bounce it back, but they turned it so it was facing the opposite direction!
The confusion on the driver's face when he came back was most amusing...
"I've lost count of the number if times I've heard either this story or one very, very like it."
Oh, it's real all right. With us, a small car (not a mini, but still small enough) had blocked everyone in the company car park. After paging a number of times, we (about half a dozen of us) moved it out of the way, with everyone subsequently leaving easily after that.
About an hour and a half later, said driver (apparently oblivious to the pages) eventually turns up, and quite cross, told us "we couldn't do that".
Well, going on recent evidence, it appears we could. :-)
It's a bit of a tradition around here:
Reminds me of the time some of my rugby playing mates popped
We popped the PE teacher ZAZ http://www.vehiclepassion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Blonde-tests-car1.jpg (sans blonde) on top of 4 steel garbage bins.
That is nothing to what some of our compatriots in a school in one of the country side towns did.
All old schools in Bulgaria used to be built to more or less the same plan featuring a gigantic (5m or thereabouts wide) staircase. So while the teacher's council was in session, they took the deputy head Skoda (again - the old variety which weighted around 500kg), got it up the staircase to the first floor and parked in front of the meeting room.
> We popped the PE teacher ZAZ
We did something similar, except it was the PE teacher himself and, rather than on bins it was in a sack in the middle of the school playing fields.
As an indication of his unpopularity with both pupils and staff, the Head came past fairly soon afterwards and enquired as to who was the wriggling & cursing person in the sack..
On being informed who it was he just said "oh. Carry on then" and wandered off.
(Anon for obvious reasons - it's highly unlikely that he is still alive but people consisting of mostly bile and venom might hang on just to spite everyone.)
"We popped the PE teacher ZAZ http://www.vehiclepassion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Blonde-tests-car1.jpg (sans blonde) on top of 4 steel garbage bins."
Minis (the old ones) were popular targets for sticking cinderblocks under the suspension.
This is invisible from casual inspection and _just_ lists the tyres clear of the road surface.
Teacher jumps in car, starts up and goes nowhere fast.
Same thing happened at my old school as an end of year prank. One of the students had a mini and it was "transported" bit by bit onto the music hall roof by some of the upper 6th form. A few years after that someone broke into the art block and bricked up the doorway to the art teacher's office. Best bit was even the teachers knew who did it but the art teacher was so disliked by everyone that no one would tell him who the culprit was :)
It's even easier with 2CVs (or certainly was back in the mid-90's) - with a little gentle persuasion they dismantle so easily and are quite simple to carry up corridors, stairs and through skylights.
Not that we ever did it to the beloved pride and joy of the annoying git in our halls of residence, oh no officer...
Yep! Did that at Moulton Agricultural College in the mid 80's
Caving rope, a couple of scaffold pole (and clamp) and a pulley, liberally aided by 'large' agricultural students.
Anonymous as the lecturer whose car it was, never did work out who had done it.
A week later we filled the top floor corridor of the accommodation block with straw bales so that everyone had to climb out of their windows.
Ah! to be young and carefree again :-)
I have been in corporate IT so long that I cannot fathom how this spontaneous collaboration could happen, that anyone would know how to disassemble a car (and reassemble it afterwards) or why anyone would even see his interest in participating in such an action kindled....
Something similar done by Cambridge students back in 1958:
I believe it took the students one night to put it up there, and the authorities a week to take it down.
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While in high school, a group in the neighborhood decided to have fun with one grumpy old guy who loved his beer a bit too much. He bought a new VW Beetle and then the fun...
1) They picked up the car late one night and placed on his front porch.
2) They tested it's alleged watertight capabilities by putting it in his swimming pool.
3) The last one before they wandered off to greener pastures or maybe got bored was stand it up and lean against the tree in his front yard.
I was hoping to find out who did it just to congratulate them.. never did find out though.
My dad did something like that once. He was the project manager at a big building site at that time, so he had the proper equipment at his disposal. They were building a new administrative block for a bank. One particular VW beetle was repeatedly blocking the loading area for the lorries. Then on some day it was gone. When the owner was asking around whether anyone had seen his car, my dad had the pleasure of pointing to a roof terrace five storeys above street level...
But that was in the late 1970ies, when people didn't sue that much.
This is one of my favourite harmless pranks I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC_SxQ55r7o
Of course if you're just stopping for a couple of minutes, the correct technique is to approximately park your car in a space, but about two feet out from the kerb and then put on your hazard warning lights so it looks to everyone else as if you're trying to pull out...
Nothing says "Finish this freaking road" like a full-sized American sedan 30 meters up on a "Freeway to nowhere"
http://www.mercurynews.com/scott-herhold/ci_24322997/herhold-story-behind-joe-collas-famous-1976-highway
My own experience of this sort of thing involved a VW Beetle, a not-yet-open bridge as a shortcut, and the sudden realization that the dirt ramps did not go across the whole width of the exit side.
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