My subject today is BMW’s. As you know, they are a well-made German automobile, and expensive. I do not hate them for being the kind of car that only wealthy people can afford, even if the sort of wealthy people who own them tend to be thoughtless, shallow twits.
The BMW’s that I hate are seagoing BMW’s, for this expensive European import is part of the carscape in this province, and as such it finds its way onto the BC Ferries. Here is where the hate comes in: comes in when we are just a little way out and there’s oh, just a little choppiness on the ocean and that alarm in the BMW goes off. For these cars usually have an alarm that responds to a little agitation with a “high-pitched” hooting or mewing or caterwauling or yowling or howling. Yeah, the Beamer is a screamer.
It is not by the way, the only screamer. Several other brands have alarms, but the BMW is the car most likely to spoil your voyage on our Supernatural seas.
You know how it goes: you have driven madly from Vernon or Kamloops or, God! Quesnel! and you got a richly deserved four-hundred-dollar speeding ticket on the Coquihalla. You got to the ferry, and you sat and sat in the lineup and finally crept on board, and now you just want to stay in the car on the car-deck for a little down time, a little snooze maybe, before you go upstairs for coffee from you don’t want to be told where and a dish of greasy chips and reformulated fish or a big Dixie cup with chopsticks sticking out of it. The ferry starts up and that chirpy American girl hectors you to come up and enjoy all the on-board excitements, the Bread Garden meals, the facilities with disabilities, just ask any crew MEMber. She can’t help the way she talks; and you will ignore her until it is time for offLOADing. You settle back, you recline the seat, relax. Yeah. Maybe a snooze.
The ferry is out of the bay now, the water is more open, a zephyr breeze raises three-inch wavelets on the surface of the sea. HWEANHH HWEANHH HEWEANHH. There she blows! And thus she shall continue, with brief intermissions while the BMW alarm system rests and gathers its juices for the next four-minute assault on us.
The announcement asks “the owner of BMW licence number AMK107 please return to the car deck….” You know the futile routine. Nothing is gonna happen. The alarm might run out of juice and stop doing its thing, or at least take a rest till we get to The Fingers, near Departure Bay. If the owner shows up at all, he will shrug and kvetch his way out of it by proclaiming that he has no idea how to turn it off.
BC Ferries could deal with the Beamer beeper if they had the balls. Just post a sign at the ticket booth, maybe another at the on-ramp: “If your car alarm sounds during the voyage, our deck crew will strike your vehicle with sledge hammers until the noise stops.”
What would take more doing but be more fun would be a big mobile sling that could amble around the car deck and hoist the beeper over to the side of the ferry, then hurl the effing Beamer out into the ocean. The sound made by the car hitting the water would be a very nice sound, a “fwormk.” Quite a big “FWORMK.” I believe that is the correct spelling. Then the car would disappear neath the waves forever, and if a couple of yuppies were in the car, or had clung to it desperately trying to stop it being slung out to sea, and thus shared the fate of the vehicle?
Even better.
Judgement in his countenance!
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