Globex Corporation Newsletter

So here I am, in Cheyenne on a Tuesday evening. That's not the way it was supposed to be.

I got up before 9am this morning. I was heading to the RC for a baptism, sort of a last second kind of thing, but I had everything taken care of. I gassed up and got an oil change. I had some soda and chips for the trip. I had my breakfast all planned out and the coffee was brewing when I woke up.

I hit the road at 9:15, taking the less travelled route of US 85 as it's a pretty good road and hardly any traffic. I could take I-25 up to Orin Junction and into Lusk, but taking US 85 is a little bit shorter and you get to see different country.

I was about 30 miles out of Cheyenne when I ran into bad road conditions. It was snowing, the roads were wet, the wind was blowing me all over the road. I noticed it was a little warm in the car, I was going to turn up the heat, but I really needed both hands on the wheel.

The bad weather ran out surprisingly quick and I went for my heater controls. I turned the heat up but didn't notice a change in temp. Then I glanced at the engine coolant temp gague. I was pegged! I was overheating!

I pulled over and decided to look under the hood. Maybe something was clogging air flow to the radiator. Maybe a big switch under the hood was switched to "HOT" when it needed to be in the "COLD" position. Truthfully, I'm not much good under the hood, but if something is obviously wrong, I'll pick it up about 25% of the time.

It was something obvious. As steam arose from under the hood, I noticed that the radiator cap wasn't on properly. I put on some gloves and fatened the cap down properly and decided what to do next. I was 30 miles from home, about 50 miles from the next town of any consequence. It was snowing a little bit where I was. What to do.

I turned around and headed back toward Cheyenne. It was soon obvious, though, that I wasn't going to make it very far, the radiator must have been pretty dry. I pulled into a ranch about 10 miles down the road. There was no one home, but there was a hose that would reach the car. I topped of the radiator with water after things cooled a bit. I restarted the car, felt a blast of heat hit me as the heater was now working. The coolant temp was about where it should be. I decided to head back toward the RC.

I only got about a mile before I was overheating again. I turned around and once again headed back the Cheyenne.

I made it home, travelling no faster than 40mph for the last 20 miles. I topped off with water and went inside to call my dad. We both figured that the radiator cap probably hadn't been put on properly when they checked my coolant level when I got my oil changed. I made sure the radiator was full of water, ran it to allow the water pump to circulate water through the radiators plumbing. Assured I had a proper coolant level, I hit the road again.

I made it about 5 miles this time before I noticed the car once again overheating. So again I headed back to Cheyenne. I called the place that changed my oil and told them my story. The manager offered to do a flush and fill of my radiator free of charge. That only took a half hour or so and I gave a little test drive. Less than three miles down the road it overheated again.

I kept my anger in check as I talked to the manager of the oil change place. He suggested a thermostat. I had installed a new thermostat on my old Chevy Citation and figured that was a likely cause of the overheating so I purchased one at an auto parts store.

Engines have apparently changed a lot in the past 25 years. I couldn't even locate the thermostat on my Subaru. I know about where it should have been, though I don't think I ever saw it. I checked the web but couldn't find any instructions particular to my make and model. If the thermostat is where I think it was, I wouldn't have been able to gety to it anyway.

So now my car is at a garage. They're going to install the thermostat that I purchased tonight and do a pressure test on the radiator tomorrow. I have no idea what's going to happen, but I do know the problems that can arise from allowing an engine to run hot for so long.

I'm not bitching about my Subaru, it's the best car I've ever had. Also, Mega-Bitch Wednesday is tomorrow. I'm trying to put a Positive Tuesday spin on this, it's just kind of hard to do.

The weather was bad futher north, perhaps I'd have run into some bad weather. That Chevy Citation I mentioned earlier had a transmission go bad in a blizzard and I eventually had to pull over. I found out later that there had been a bad accident with fatalities a few miles ahead of me as cars piled into each other under white out conditions. Who knows if I'd have been involved in it as well had my transmission held together. Who know what would have lain in front of me today if I'd kept going.

I try to be that guy who believes that things happen for a reason. For the most part, being in the right place at the right time has worked out for me in my life. You can never confirm, however, that not being in the wrong place at a given time will keep you out of trouble. So even though I'm trying to believe that this car trouble is all for the best, there's no way to ever prove that it is.

I guess when you get down to it, things happen. We perceive them as 'good' and 'bad' but they're really just all neutral events. If the head on my Subaru is cracked from the heat, it's simply the laws of physics. Shit happens. It sucks for me, but that kind of thing will happen. It may be 'bad luck' but it's not 'bad.' It's just something that was bound to happen under the circumstances. And there's really nothing I can do about it now.

BOJ



THERE IS ALWAYS A SILVER LINING

19 April 2006

I just received news on my car repairs. Rather than sit down a write a Mega-Bitch Wenesday post on the subject, I'm adding to this one.

My water pump is out, my head gasket is shot. Repair is going to be spendy. Why the hell am I including this in a Positive Tuesday post? Let me give you a few reasons:

1) I can afford 75% of the cost of reairs right now, a loan from my folks will take care of the rest, and I'll be able to pay them back in a couple of weeks. Ninety days ago I couldn't afford a new harmonica. I ate a lot of rice because I couldn't afford to eat much else. I really like rice, but c'mon!

2) I found out about the trouble about 30 miles north of Cheyenne. If I'd have found it out 15 or 20 minutes later I would have been literally (well, not literally...) in the middle of nowhere. Between Cheyenne and Torrington on US 85 there's only Meriden and Hawk Springs. Neither is of any consequence and pretty much without services. It would have cost quite a bit of money for me to get back to Cheyenne and even more to get the car back to Cheyenne.

3) Even though the resulting car trouble caused me to miss the baptism of Aaires, it's better that it happened on a day off than on a day when I was going to work.

4) My original plans had been to go to Ft. Collins and play at Somi's. Who's to say what would have happened if I had the trouble there. Again, it would have been a real hassle to get back to Cheyenne.

5) At best, repairs will leave me without a car until Friday. I go back to work tomorrow, but a ride to work shouldn't be too difficult to obtain. Tim, my neighbor not only works the same place I do, but works the same shift I do. If I'm going to get stuck without a car, I'm in pretty much the best situation for it to happen. Tim owes me a ride or two anyway as I drove him to work a couple of times when his car wouldn't start this past winter.

6) After some research on the internet, I found that this is a known probably with my model of car. I saw posts from a lot of people bitching about it. True, it's not the best situation, but I not only got 85,000 miles out of this car before having ANY trouble, and the price quoted for repairs is about $300 less than what most people ended up paying.

7) I have a car, that even though it has 85,000 miles on it is definitely worth fixing. Yeah, I'm throwing a little more money at this car than I'd have liked to, but I had been saving for a new vehicle for the past couple of months. I had a tiny bit of money in a savings account so I'd have a downpayment in a couple of years. So I'm only a couple of months behind that goal now. I still have food to eat and a roof over my head.

I could go on and on. This isn't the best thing I've ever had happen to me, but it's far from the worst. As it is, I have plenty of reasons to count myself lucky.

I need to remember that.