So as my wife has informed you, we spent the better part of last Tuesday "hanging out" at O'Reilly's, and by hanging out I mean not hanging out. Working. On our people skills.
This all started when I felt the need to take E's overseas screening paperwork to the doc's office here on base. I didn't really feel like putting on the big armor jacket and helmet and gloves necessary to ride my motorcycle over there so I opted for the grocery-getter, seeing how the outside temperature was somewhere in the neighborhood of sweltering. The trip to the office was uneventful, and the time I spent in the office was even more uneventful as I found that there was yet another hoop to jump through before my screening could be finalized. Slightly miffed that this hoop was not mentioned before, I went back to the car to head home and inform the wife that she needed to schedule yet another appointment.
By the time I made it the 50 feet to the car I could not wait to get back into a wonderfully cool, controlled climate. I turn the key yearning for the blast of cold air and.... nothing. "hmm.." I think to myself and turn the key again, this time making sure that the clutch is all the way to the floor. Again, no sign of life from the engine. I begin to sweat and wonder why I didn't say "Newport" when asked which set of orders I would like to pick back in A-school. "Gulfport sounded so interesting. HA!" I remind myself as still the car will not start. I pop the hood and check all my connections, which of course does no good; I am not entirely sure of what I am looking at sometimes. "Why couldn't the academy have offered some shop classes?" I ask myself. "Because," comes my own retort, "they wanted to better prepare me for life by offering a more demanding academic schedule." But this is life!! And I am so unprepared!! thanks again Houghton for a wonderful education. At least now I can come up with a mathmatical equation to figure out how far I now have to
walk because I don't know what's wrong with my car.
After what seemed like miles in the sahara, only stickier, I arrived at the Police HQ on base. I recieved a number of strange looks from my cohorts who were on shift and I was asked "Why are you still awake?" and "Don't you have to work tonight?"
"Why yes, I do have to work tonight. Thank you for reminding me that this project now has a deadline." I have to be at work by 8:45 tonight and the wife has a weekly doctor's appt. early tomorrow morning so this leaves precious little time to fix my car and possibly catch a nap before shift. Of course, with a wife who is 37 weeks pregnant and my only means of transportation that works right now being a crotch rocket that she won't touch, I have to get this car fixed
today. I tell some variation of this story about twenty times before I finally find the one guy at work who has some mechanical background and I ask him about my current situation.
"Check yur connections" he drawls in response.
"Connections to what?" I ask, trying to rule out as much as possible early on, plus I had already looked at a few connections, including the ones from the spark plugs to the distributer. (I would explain how I know about these connections but it would add to much to the story and can easily be summed up as three cylinder engines don't run on two, so there you have it.)
"Battery terminals, yur starter, plugs, all those little wires." He explains.
Swell, so I am off to the parts store for a terminal cleaning kit. I distinctly remember that in the few minutes I was poking around under the hood I had noticed quite a bit of that blueish-white snow-looking stuff that was undoubtedly fouling my battery connections. Of course this time I had no option but to take the bike and sweat out the ride to O'Reilly's. I bought all the necessary items and was back to the base in no time.
I rolled up to the gate, expecting to get the "wave through" from the gate gaurds that I have been working with for months now. On that list that I gave you earlier of what is required to ride a bike on base, you need to pencil in boots. I forgot to mention them, just like I had forgotten to wear them on this trip. Of course it had to be the one gate gaurd that was so gung-ho about his job that he couldn't just let me slide this once with an I-promise-I-will-wear my-boots-every-time-after-this-one line. No...he made me park my bike at the gate, get a ride from the shift supervisor to my house, get my boots, and get a ride back to the gate so I could ride my bike to my house, get my tools, and then head back to medical to fix my car. Wait a minute, I thought I was the cops!! I would be vengeful and give him a ticket for something stupid but that one gate gaurd also happens to be the only one to walk to work. Foiled again, oh well back to fixing my car.
So I now have the tools and the know how to get this thing running again. I cleaned up my terminals, and the clamps and reassembled my car. "Now I can't wait to get this thing home and got to bed" I think to myself while sitting in the seat and turning the key. Still nothing from the motor.
Augh!! What now!! Well, jumping the car got it to work, so
without ever turning the car off I drove it home, got the wife to give me a ride back to my bike, rode it back, then got in the car with E and took it straight to O'Reilly's, where it died in the parking lot.
(This is where it gets interesting.)
"I hope it's the battery or something else that is cheap that they sell here." I thought to myself, since it was apparent that the car was not leaving that spot in its current state. I entered the store and explained my predicament. A helpful employee came right out with a battery tester and we quickly established that the 7 year old stock battery would need to be replaced. So I again walk back into the store to purchase a new battery.
In walks the redneck.
"Is that yur Nissan out thar?" he asks.
"Um, yes..." I reply, unaware that my car was so popular among the hick and toothless.
"Can I look atchur fuses?"
"Sure..." I answer.
The redneck exits, pokes around under my hood and his (which is conveniently parked right next to ours. Hence the "you were right, shoulda brought the camera" comment to B.) then returns to the counter and asks where to find some other parts he "needs."
My help and I exit to work on putting in the nice shiny new battery and negative terminal clamp that I broke. Now I know why service shops charge more to fix a car that has already been worked on by the owner. Outside we meet the hick girlfriend, who is aimlessly examining her own wreck of a nissan. My help and I disconnect the battery and are in the proccess of pulling it out when the redneck returns, befuddled at the predicament that he finds himself in. [
note from e: picture a bunch of guys staring under the hood, muttering random mechanical terminology and wiping sweat from their brows. got the picture?] Said redneck begins a random line of questioning about fuses, relays and even his dimmer switch, which I think is stuck at full dull, if you catch my drift. He asks me if my dimmer switch rolls as easily as his and then asks if he can pull mine out and put it in his car to troubleshoot.
"Dude, my car won't start as it is; I'm not piecing it out even more right now." I tell him. So he is back to his own devices. Finally the real question comes out. The redeck asks my help why he has two fuses for his horn. The employee patiently explains that one fuse is for the horn and the other is probably for the anti theft-device.
"Anti-theft? who would steal a horn!?!" the redneck asks.
"Hunny....just don't tawlk." says the girlfriend. Hooray! finally someone with some sense.
The rest of the install went along great and now my car starts up quite nicely. All of this running around and fixing things really got me thinking though. What happens if something goes seriously wrong with my car?! We have really grown accustomed to having that thing around and we kind of need it now, with a baby and all and can't afford to be out a set of wheels. So what am I to do? Sell the bike and buy another "soccer parent mobile" you say? Nah I'll stick with what I've got and make it work, after all that's what my mother in law taught me. So I have been working on this all afternoon and this it what I have come up with: The sportbike babyseat.
.
and you guys said a bike wasn't practical. This way, at least the boy and I can get around if the car goes south again.
*The title of this post is an adaptation of an old honda motorcycles ad slogan. Kudos to you if you remember/know what I am taking about. Alternatively this post would be named "check your co
necktions. Again kudos if you get that one.
What's a day without a trip to the unit? And of course, once we're there we can't just do the one thing we came to do, we must also look in boxes and sweat and lose all ability to string two coherant thoughts together. The baby did great...well, for the most part:
oh, and speaking of shooting, d and I went down to the beach on the 3rd with our pastor's wife and some of her kids & grandkids, and d experimented a little with the "fireworks" setting on our camera. Apparently it's harder than it looks since the shutter stays open for a realllly long time. By the end of the night my head became a makeshift tripod, but I'm not sure it helped much since the kid was suffering from hiccups at the time.
and you guys said a bike wasn't practical. This way, at least the boy and I can get around if the car goes south again.
