Samlock
Addicted to ArboristSite
Who has the crutches in the pic above?
Well, it does look like the car was ill and needed some support, doesn't it?
Actually the crutches belong to Aleksandr Nikolayevits himself. Bad knees, you see.
Aleksandr Nikolayevits fixed the shock absorbers, a front wheel bearing and the anti-roll bar. I found the needed spare parts in the village store. Yes, they sell car parts in groceries and liquor stores as well - the roads down there literally eat the vehicles. No car services couldn't be found in the village, so they phoned Aleksandr Nikolayevits from the store to ask him if he wanted to help a gentleman who speaks Russian in a funny way. From the store I picked up a young gentleman from Tadzhikistan named Borya (you can see his neck in the picture), he knew the way to A.N.'s house. Borya worked for Sergey - the rich man of the village - building the log houses. Sergey gave me a lecture for driving the shabby car, it's bad for the business, he said. He had a brand new Pajero worth 70 000 USD. I was glad to tell him what Pajero means in Spanish.
When I saw Aleksandr Nikolaevits swinging on his crouches yelling: "OH, THERE IS THE ####NG FOREIGNER! WELL, AT LEAST THE ####### CAR IS FAMILIAR TO ME!" I thought it's going to be a looong day. But it all went well. A.N. made his diagnose, mostly by feeling and hearing (his eyes weren't too good either), and gave orders spiced with the most colourful cussing I've ever heard. Borya and I made the tinkering. A.N. wanted to have 250 rubles (10 USD) and 2 bottles of vodka for the work. As I gave him the bottles I was curios why 2 bottles and I said: "You have 2 knees, right?". He replied: "Yes, I have 2 knees, and I also have a neighbor."
Oh, and how they drank, Aleksandr Nikolaevits and his neighbor! I stopped by after a test drive to tell everything is OK with the car. Well, the old men did not want to hear anything about the ##### car, but they wanted to know if a Finlander knows how to fight, so I had to escape mighty fast. And later that night I was walking around the village, I got lost, no streetlights there, it was dark like in the cave, but singing and yelling coming from the A.N.'s house gave me the clue where I was.