LOCKED IN

or.... A funny thing happened to the fastidious guy at the airport yesterday

Nigel (fellow archaeologist) and I were sitting in our car at the mine site airport yesterday morning, enjoying the cool air conditioning that was being produced by the wanton burning of fossil fuel. Our attention was drawn to this guy who was clearly an office worker* at the mine. How would we know that he was an office worker I hear you ask? Well because.....

1. He had a very clean uniform
2. He was wearing a helmet in an area that does not require a helmet ie: the airport
3. His helmet was very very clean
4. He had the cleanest car on site, no doubt this 4wd was used only to transport other office people from office to airport to camp etc etc

Now our attention be drawn because whilst we were sitting back in the air conditioned comfort of our car, this guy had a bottle of Windex in one hand and a cleaning cloth in the other and he was vigorously cleaning every piece of glass on his vehicle. Which kind of made us laugh, mostly because to do that to our cars would be laughable as they'd be covered in dirt/mud seconds later, our cars are content with their fortnightly hose down and scrub. It's more than they deserve too.

So imagine the hilarity when we looked back over our shoulders to see that now he was in fact sitting inside the rear compartment of his vehicle cleaning the inside of his back window. "Man what the hell is wrong with this guy? Why so friggen neat, we're in the Pilbara and on a mine site FFS" were the kind of comments that were flowing freely between Nigel and I. It was then that I felt I should snap a pic because "nobody is gonna believe this".

sorry about the pic quality, I used my iPhone, but I've lightened him a bit in the next one

After I grabbed the pic I noticed he was tapping on the side window of his car, trying to get the attention of an Emergency Services guy who had parked next to him, then he spun to look at me, feeling kind of embarrassed to be caught looking I quickly looked away. Probably about 3 minutes later I noticed the Emergency services vehicle pulling away from the car park, so I glanced back at the cleaning guy and he turned to look at me. Again I looked away but this time I kind of felt something wasn't quite right so I looked back. And I was right, this time he was banging on his window and waving at me to come to him....then it hit me, the guy has locked himself inside the back of his car. (these cars have safety cages between back seat and rear compartment so there's only one way in and one way out)

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I shouldn't laugh but man did I ever. "He's locked himself inside!" Nigel and I are now both bent over with laughter and then I realised that whilst we had the air con on he probably didn't, so I jumped out and ran around to open his car door. Poor bastard was sweating like hell and red faced with embarrassment, in between breaths, in between laughing, I checked that he was okay and he was. Just a bit hot and bothered and sheepish.

"Mate I'm sorry but this is possibly the funniest thing I've seen in months"

"Oh jeez thanks for coming, I really didn't know how I was going to explain this once my boss arrived"

Poor bastard!

*not that there's anything wrong with that, us field personnel need office people to back us up and keep us safe in the field, just wanted to clear that up