car levitation

Kim and I went out for coffee yesterday and we were watching the traffic and pedestrians go by as you do when you are sipping coffee and nibbling on cheese and pickle sandwiches. For a while we were distracted by the vanity plates on the cars - we saw one that said "hi mel" and one that said "kimmy" and one on a fancy SUV that said "clazz 1." Then we became distracted by the people trying to parallel park on the other side of the street and then finally, just when we thought things were getting a bit dull and we were going to have to move on to chowing down on chocolate chip shortbread to stay entertained, a huge tow truck drove up to one of the cars parked across the street. This wasn't any ordinary tow truck like we have in the states though, this was a levitate the car right out of the parking space sort of tow truck.

So at 3:14 the truck pulled up and two guys jumped out and made a quick circle around the car and the one guy went off to do something with the parking meter and the other guy lowered some large metal legs from the sides of the tow truck (presumably for extra stability). Then he lowered the rectangular lifting arm over the offending car. Obviously it would be ideal if at this point in the story a giant magnet came out of the lifting apparatus and just sucked the car right off the ground but since this was a convertible that probably wouldn't have worked anyway. Instead, he went around the car and put a clamp on each wheel which he then attached to the lifting bit with a chain.

By 3:16 the car was ready for takeoff. This was perhaps the most intense moment of all as the car did not go straight up in the air as I would have expected. Instead, each wheel lifted off sort of one at a time and the whole car was wobbling a bit in the air like one of those mobile things you have over a little kid's crib made up of farm animals or representations of heavenly bodies. Except the car had no musical accompaniment.


By 3:20 the car had been lifted completely off the ground and after a bit of wobbling and subtle dancing in the air lowered onto the truck bed. A second or two later and the truck was driving away. By that time we were stuffed on cafe food so we had to move on from Starbucks to the computer game store :). We did pass a slightly confused older couple that may have been the car owners. The man was taking pictures of the sign on the parking meeter and the woman had so much fur on her coat she could easily have taken a spot on the mobile opposite the car.