When I got home the other night, The Light of my Life™ was sitting bundled up in scarf and fleece sweater. “I think there’s something wrong with the boiler,” she said “I can’t get the house warm”.
“Well, do you realize how cold it is outside?” I asked “That could have something to do with it.”
Our house is comparatively small, which means it heats up very quickly, but it’s also made of papier-mâché and spit, which means it cools down very quickly too. Our gas fire only has two settings, “On” and “Not On”. When it’s running, it has the living room toasty in no time, when it’s off, things cool down fast. So, we spend a lot of time hopping up and down to meddle with the switch.
However, the fire only heats one room. The rest of the house relies on an ancient and rather frightening boiler which sits in a cupboard and emits loud rattles and clunks at regular intervals. The thermostat seems to operate under its own volition with very little regard for the actual temperature and we’ve spent many a happy night, lying awake listening to it fire up and switch off, fire up and switch off, sometimes several times a minute. We’ve been warned by people who know about these things that it will need replacing soon, but at the moment we’re frittering away our income on food and car repairs so it will have to wait. And to be fair, it does a passable job of keeping the house warm.
Except when temperatures plummet the way they have this week.
Our friends in Phoenix were horrified when we announced our relocation to the frozen wastes of Colorado.
“Don’t you know it’s cold up there?” they asked. Well yeah, of course we did but as I pointed out repeatedly, it’s supposed to be cold in winter. And one of the many delightful things about Colorado is that even in winter, the sun shines most days so while there may be snow on the ground, and ice in the shady spots, it’s usually still comfortably warm outside.
But not this week.
I was spoiled on Monday because I drove the Subaru to work. With its powerful heater, road hugging tires and best of all, heated seats, I cruised down that hill and back up again at night, all the while wondering what everyone else was complaining about – the roads were fine, the snow wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t that cold. Sure, there were hurricane force winds out there (109mph recorded in Golden) but they didn’t affect me. What’s the big deal? I found out on Tuesday when I was back to driving my usual transport, Angus the 4Runner. Now I love Angus to bits, and he’s taken me places I would be scared to attempt in the shiny Subaru, but it has to be said, when it comes to luxury, the car manufacturers have moved on somewhat in the eighteen years since he rolled off the production line.
The heater works, sort of, in that it dries out your eyeballs while making no discernible difference to the temperature. The tires don’t hug the road so much as caress it, in a gentle stroking motion. And worst of all, the seats have to be heated manually, namely by placing your bum on them for 45 minutes or so. Even the tape player refused to be roused from its slumbers, forcing me to rely on the radio, which never helps my mood.
Although the drive through the mountains wasn’t too bad. It was only when I hit the town that things got really gnarly as a winter storm was in full force and traffic at a virtual standstill. Still, I made it into the office eventually, much to the surprise of the city dwellers who hadn’t expected to see me at all. Having arrived late, I had to remain shackled to my desk until well after 7pm, but at least, I thought smugly, the roads will be better now. Wrong again Einstein.
Although the snow had for the most part been cleared, the ground itself was slick and shiny as sub-zero temperatures caused everything to be coated in a film of ice. There’s nothing quite like that exhilarating little thrill when you feel your car begin to slide beneath you, especially if you’re surrounded by much bigger vehicles, often traveling faster than you are. 2-wheel drive, 4-wheel drive, it’s all the same when you’re on ice and I think that’s the best workout my heart’s had since the last time I attempted to go jogging.
Creeping along at around 35 mph I was passed by a blonde soccer mom type in a Ford Explorer doing, I would guess, about 70. About 1/4 a mile ahead I saw her taillights suddenly begin to zig-zag as she fishtailed across three lanes of traffic. Luckily the drivers around her were driving cautiously and each had time to avoid her so she ended up on the hard shoulder, completely unharmed. As I passed her she was staring fixedly ahead with her knuckles white on the steering wheel. About 5 miles further on, creeping along at around 35 mph I was passed by a blonde soccer mom type in a Ford Explorer doing, I would guess, about 70. Sigh.
Still, Angus and I made it home unscathed and in no time I was indoors and ready for dinner. There’s nothing like a big bowl of steaming hot, home-made soup on a night like this so it was a shame we didn’t have any. Instead, I microwaved a pizza and munched disconsolately while huddling over the space heater. By bedtime we were, according to our cheapo thermometer on the front deck, down to -13F. I talked to the dogs to see if I could persuade them not to pee until say, May, but it was no dice. So, wrapping myself up like Nanook of the North, I dragged them outdoors for their evening constitutional. It was ear nipping, toe stinging, snot freezing cold out there – the kind of cold that sucks your breath from your lungs. Still, there’s something inherently comically in watching a dog try to pee without putting any feet on the ground.
When I dragged my bum out of bed at 5:30 the following morning, the windows were coated in Jack Frost’s artwork – even on the inside. Cheapo thermometer told me it was -28F, which is bloody cold. I took one look at Angus, buried in a cocoon of ice, another look back at the kettle, and thought.
“Today, I’m going to work from home.”
Tag: Cars
Wheel of Fortune
I put the spare wheel from the pickup truck back in place last weekend. That was quite an accomplishment because it’s been sitting in the bed for almost two years now. There’s no way to secure it there, which meant any time we planned to park the truck in town, muggins here had to heave the thing into the cab. Then back again when we got home.
“Why didn’t you just put it away earlier?” I hear you ask. Well, mainly because it was such an ordeal getting the darn thing out in the first place and I had no enthusiasm for the process of trying to put it back. The good people at Ford who designed the spare wheel cradle for their truck line in the early 90’s obviously weren’t allowing for the fact that their customers might one day need to actually access it.
First you have to crawl way, way under the truck, so it’s best if you only get a flat on dry days when you’re wearing old clothes. Then you use an enormous spanner (not the one that came with the truck, but a different sized enormous spanner, which of course, you knew to carry with you) to unwind a long bolt which lowers a three-foot long metal bar on which the spare wheel sits.
If the aforementioned long bolt isn’t shiny and new, maybe if it’s been somewhere dirty and wet for perhaps ten or eleven years, like say, underneath a truck, it will be more or less impossible to undo. It might take you an hour or so of struggle before you come to this conclusion but come to it you will. This is why we have the American Automobile Association. However, lifesavers though they may be, they didn’t come back after the flat had been repaired to put the spare away for us.
I know it’s not a good idea to leave it there indefinitely and winter’s a-coming which would make crawling on the ground even less pleasant. So, last Saturday I spent a happy hour cursing and grunting as I tried to take the weight of a ¾ ton wheel with my left hand while screwing it into place with my right. Three days later, my back hardly hurt at all so as wheel changes go, this was far from being my worst.
One that comes to mind was the time when I decide to rotate the tires on Wilf, my first car, some (clears throat) years ago. As regular readers of The Gunsmoke Diaries will have gathered, I’m not exactly Mr. Fix-it and never have been, so why I chose to perform this task an hour before I was due to go out for the night is a mystery, even now. Citroen used an elaborate suspension system in those days, which they claimed would allow their cars to be driven on three wheels. I never put that to the test, but it did make jacking up the car something of a process because even when the chassis was a good three feet in the air, the wheel remained firmly on the ground.
However, the real fun started after I’d given up and jacked the thing back down again. The chassis remained where it was. I suspect this was less to do with Citroen’s elaborate suspension and everything to do with my car being a decrepit bucket of bolts but either way, Wilf remained listing stubbornly to starboard at an angle of some 45 degrees. My friends weren’t best pleased when I called them to say I couldn’t take my turn at driving that night, but the good news was; he gradually eased himself back into place over the next couple of days.
Even so, that still wasn’t the least pleasant wheel change I’ve ever performed. That singular event took place late one winter’s night, high on the moors of Yorkshire. It wasn’t even my car, but instead belonged to my girlfriend at the time. We’d had a pleasant enough evening in a snug and cosy country pub. Crackling log fire, lots of dark wood, just the thing for a cold December night. By the time we left, snow was beginning to fall in great swirling clouds, and I was hoping we’d be well on our way home before it really got started.
Naturally, that wasn’t to be. We were a good fifteen miles from anywhere when my beloved steered us over a large rock sitting in the roadway. It didn’t have an orange flashing light on it, but it would scarcely have been less obvious if it had. Still, over it we went and immediately I heard the dreaded thump, thump, thump that signals a flat. I prepared to do my knight-in-shining-armour bit.
“Where’s your jack?” I asked before receiving the answer that strikes fear into any boyfriend’s heart.
“What’s a jack?”
With a sigh, I pulled on my thin jacket and headed towards the boot. The jack was there, in a well under the spare wheel. Rotten with rust but semi-functional so I hauled it out of its nest and began the backbreaking task of jacking up the car. Mother Nature was obviously waiting for this moment to unleash her full force and the wind picked up to a terrific rate, sending flurries of snow down my neck and robbing me of the little body heat I had left. Visions of sugar plums danced in my head as I heaved and pulled while the car inched painfully higher.
Just when I figured a few more turns of the crank would do the trick, the car gave a sickening crunch as the jack punched its way through the rusted floor.
“Be careful!” yelled my darling from comfort of her down coat and woolly hat, which would have been comforting had she been concerned about me, rather than her car. Gritting my teeth ever tighter, I searched around the verge until I found a flattish piece of wood and using that as a brace; began the task once more.
Finally, the old wheel was off, and I heaved the spare out of the trunk. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that it was flat. And of course, there was nowhere to fill it. Not on the Yorkshire moors after midnight, there wasn’t.
It was about that time, I decided my sweetheart wasn’t all that good-looking, there were plenty more fish in the sea, and there was no particular advantage in continuing to be polite. We had a full and frank exchange of views and agreed to go our separate ways.
But you know what? I’m OK with that.
First published: 13 September, 2005
On the Road Again
“To attract men, I wear a perfume called “New Car Interior.”
~ Rita Rudner
So Dear Wife’s truck broke down again the weekend before last. I say ‘again’, because this is becoming an all too common experience. It’s not a new truck and it’s racked up a fair few miles. Not as many as Angus the 4Runner mind you, but a hefty number all the same. Which means that it’s reached the stage where bits are starting to need replacing. Not just fan belts and hoses but expensive parts like the transmission for instance.
We’ve been nursing that particular piece of technology along for over a year now and when the truck left her stranded by the roadside about a month ago, the symptoms seemed to fit. Turned out to be the alternator instead which meant a repair in the hundreds of dollars instead of the thousands, which was all well and good but we know we can only dodge that bullet for so long.
However, common occurrence or not, this last breakdown was particularly unfortunate in that not only was I elsewhere for the day, I had committed the unforgivable sin of not having my cell phone on. Or at least it was switched on, but it wasn’t on my person. When I changed into my kilt for the band performance at the Polo Club, I forgot to transfer the phone to my sporran. Instead I left it in the pocket of my shorts, which I left in the back of the car. Which meant that Dear Wife was stranded in a supermarket parking lot for over three hours before she tracked down a friend to come and pick her up. Meanwhile, I was unreachable.
In a beer tent.
Having fun.
When she originally bought the truck, Dear Wife had a horse and needed something which could haul a trailer, along with bails of hay, saddles and other equine accessories. That hasn’t been necessary in a long time and for all that we love the truck, it isn’t an ideal vehicle for our lifestyle. The gas mileage isn’t that great, it’s a bugger to park and the air-conditioning died some time ago which makes things unpleasant in the summer, particularly with highs above 100 degrees like we had this week. Winter driving is even worse. It handles poorly on ice and snow, even with bags of sand in the bed and being only 2-wheel drive, requires snow tires to get any form of traction on the hills.
So, this week found us only semi-reluctantly, in the market for a new car. Travel anywhere in the 285 corridor and you’re going to see plenty of Subarus. (Generally from behind as they crawl up the hills blocking the left lane. Ha Ha!) No, that’s not entirely true although a large number of older models are still on the road and they don’t seem to have the same oomph as the newer ones. But there’s no denying they’re popular. They appear to be an ideal fit for those who don’t want to go the big truck/SUV route, but want something that can handle Colorado’s mountain winters better than a regular sedan. And they look kinda cool too.
A couple of friends own them, as does Dear Wife’s dad and we’d enjoyed driving his during our visit last month. We were sold on the manufacturer, so no problem there. The only challenge now was to decide whether to go with the Forester or the Outback. I’ve always been a fan of the Outback so it was with a sinking heart I discovered Dear Wife leaning towards the Forester. I don’t often win these arguments, but fortunately, once we’d had a chance to play in them both, she for once, agreed I was right.
I’ve never bought a new car in my life and have only spent a limited amount of time in car dealerships. I don’t mind looking at shiny new cars, but don’t really have much of a clue why this one is so much further out of my price range than that one. I’ve also heard horror stories of endless negotiation battles with tough as nails salesmen. Some people have told me they’ve sat in the dealer’s offices until the wee hours of the morning to see who would crack first. I don’t have that kind of time, and I certainly don’t have that kind of energy.
Fortunately, these days we have easier options. One of the best investments we ever made was membership in AAA. Not only does a helpful phone operator send a tow truck to pick us up whenever we ask, they also offer a car purchasing program whereby they pretty much do everything for you. You tell them the type of vehicle you’re looking for, the bits and bobs you’d like it to have and your choice of colors. They then scour the local dealers to see if what you want is available and (hopefully) call to say when you can pick it up. Not only that, but after using all kinds of complicated arithmetic they determined we could actually afford it.
AAA lent us one in attractive shade of metallic urine and more or less gave us permission to see what it could do. We put it through its paces in the Rocky Mountain foothills where it passed with flying colors so somewhat predictably, we were sold. Which meant that after a whirlwind of phone calls over an astonishingly short period of time; we were handing over the largest check we’ve ever written in exchange for a set of three (comically large) keys. Moments later, we were pulling out of AAA’s parking lot at the wheel of a very shiny and new smelling Subaru Outback. Well actually, it was quite a few moments later because it took some time for us to get acquainted with all those buttons, lights, levers and switches.
I’m old enough to remember when owner’s manuals were about 20 pages long and that included directions for rebuilding the gear box. This one’s thicker than the last Harry Potter book and takes 59 pages just to explain the function of the seat belts. We’ve owned the car for five days now and I’m still only about a third of the way through the darn book. I’ve figured out the CD player, the sunroof and how to make heated seats work – you know; the important stuff. But the boring bits like how to change a tire, or check the steering fluid, well that’s just going to have to wait.
Right now, I’m just having too much fun driving the thing.
First Published: 26 July, 2005
Car Talk
First Published: 1 March, 2005
Angus isn’t feeling well today. Angus is my car and has been a member of the family for almost three years now. He came into the household not too long after we moved into the mountains when it became apparent that my little Nissan, despite having provided many miles of semi-trouble-free service wasn’t going to be able to handle my commute for very long. It’s around fifty miles each way and includes a vertical climb of over half a mile and that starting from one mile above sea level. I’d already spent many a happy evening standing by the side of the road while his radiator cooled down and this was only summer – a Colorado winter with a two-wheel drive didn’t hold much appeal.
So, the Nissan was sold to a high-school student who lives in the city and thinks it’s a Rolls Royce, the “Cars for Sale” ads were scoured and before long, we’d adopted a 1992 Toyota 4Runner and christened him Angus. I’m no fan of the SUV culture but Angus is small by today’s standards, gets a reasonable gas mileage and yet comes equipped with four-wheel drive, chunky tires and enough oomph to handle the Rocky Mountain foothills even in a winter blizzard. Like all old cars he has his foibles, but over the years I’ve come to know and love them. However, he’s racked up almost a quarter of a million miles in his lifetime (that’s 10 times round the world) and is of an age where he needs a little TLC every now and then.
If you’ve been reading the Gunsmoke Diaries for any length of time you’ll know that fixing things isn’t my strong point. My contribution to the business of car maintenance extends to putting the petrol in and cleaning them every once in a while. When they refuse to start, I empty the gum wrappers out of the ashtrays, remove the assorted debris from the floor and wipe the rear-view mirrors. If that doesn’t do the trick, I’m pretty much stuck. Several years ago, we invested in AAA membership and have never had cause to regret it. Tow the car to the shop. Have it fixed by someone who knows what they’re doing. Worry no more.
Two downsides to this system are a) the inordinate amounts of cash that has to change hands before I can have my car back and b) the hours of stomach clenching fear while waiting for the phone to ring. Just what’s wrong with it this time? It’s mid-afternoon as I write this, and I still haven’t heard. Having been the proud owner of a series of old cars, I’ve been going through this my entire adult life.
My very first motor was a Citroen Dyane, in multiple shades of red who went by the name of Wilf. The Dyane was a cousin of Citroen’s better known, but equally ugly 2CV. In case you’re wondering, 2CV comes from Deux Cheveaux as in two horsepower. Yes, you heard – two. And they must have been pretty tired old nags at that. The darn thing was so under powered that unless I got a decent run up, many hills defeated it completely. One rather steep ascent out of town could only be tackled in reverse. A tongue in cheek ad at the time claimed the Dyane was faster than a Ferrari. As indeed it was. Provided the Ferrari driver chose not to go above 68 mph.
However, for a seventeen-year-old it was a delightfully quirky car with all manner of bits and bobs one doesn’t see on modern automobiles. The gearshift was on the dash and rather than the H format with which we’re all familiar, had a more elaborate arrangement based on the number 4. The high beam switch was floor mounted and was operated by foot. Each seat, including the driver’s could easily be removed for impromptu picnics. And it came equipped with cruise control in the form of a coat hanger-like wire extending through the floor by which means the throttle could be locked open. Sadly, unlike today’s cruise control, a tap of the brakes did NOT release it – the wire had to be manually pushed back in. A fact I discovered milliseconds before rear-ending a truck.
Wilf had a canvas roof, which could be unclipped and rolled back just like a regular convertible. It was recommended the car not be in motion when unclipping the roof and with good reason as I discovered when casually releasing the clamp for the first time as I cruised down the motorway. In an instant the roof was hanging down the back of the car, completely obscuring the rear window which, as I had no side mirrors, was the only way of seeing what was behind me. Quite a thrill for someone only a couple of months beyond his driving test.
Britain has an abominable law called the Ministry of Transport Test or M.O.T., which in theory, is an annual road worthiness test to be performed by government approved repair shops on all cars over three years old. In practice it’s a license for unscrupulous grease monkeys to extort money from mechanically disadvantaged teenage boys. When I bought the car, it had already failed its M.O.T. once. “Here’s the three things it failed for.” said the seller. “I can either fix them or sell it to you as is for £50 less.” I chose the latter option and reviewing the faults, found that one was easy enough to fix, one was way too expensive to consider while as for the third – I never did find what the mechanic was complaining about. Neither did the shop that handled the retest. They didn’t mention item two either. But they did fail it for three completely different reasons that had inexplicably escaped the attention of the first guy.
Wilf finally died on the side of the road when his engine block literally split apart. Despite my annual insurance premiums being almost the same as I paid for the car, my coverage didn’t extend to damage to my own vehicle, just those of other people. Still, the scrap merchant gave me enough for a darn good wake in Wilf’s honour.
There have been many other cars over the years and for some, I have fonder memories than others. But I’ve loved them all in their ways. Cared for them, named them and polished them ’till I could see my face in the rust. But for now, Angus is my baby and like any concerned parent, I worry about him when he’s not well. Still, the good news is – at least I’m not trying to fix him myself.
The Gunsmoke Diaries 