Baby Truck (or How I Learned how to Fix my Truck)

My wonderful little tuck (named Baby Truck because she is so much smaller than the truck I used to drive) decided that she was tired of driving back and forth to and from work and school. A couple of nights ago, while I was on my way home from work, I noticed that my battery level was really low (a brand new battery because my last one finally died on me even though it was deemed 'fine' by the 'experts'). It had been doing this for a couple of days, so I stayed in the right lane of the freeway and started praying to the Powers That Be that my battery wouldn't die until I got into my parking spot at the Mini Manor (pushing my truck anywhere uphill sucks, no matter how small she is). No one listened to me, and I started feeling the hesitation and lurching of a dying car. I pulled off to the side, cried my eyes out (I sort of panicked when I thought I had left my phone at work) looking for my cell phone (so glad I had it on and charged up) and called Mom. Most Minor Minion answered the phone with bad news: neither Mom nor Dad were home. Next call was to Mom's cell phone. Not on (found out later it was sitting on the charger at home). Finally I struck gold when I called Dad's phone. They came to my rescue, called a tow-truck and hauled my poor, dead truck to their place so we could work on it.

Himself drove me to school yesterday and stuck around to help with the repairs. Mom and I decided it was the alternator (I had been really hoping it wasn't, but again the Powers That Be didn't listen), and we set off to buy a new one and some of the tools to used to put it into the truck. Next came the hard part: removing the old alternator without damaging anything else.

Long (painful) story short, after four trips to the auto parts store (once to get the parts needed, one more time to get the alternator exchanged since they gave me the wrong one, once more to exchange the belt they sold us (we were supposed to have a 956, the first guy gave us a 1000. Needless to say it was way too long), and once to take the battery there to get it charged up) we finally have a working truck! Everything works wonderfully, and I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get to work later today. Also, I get to actually start my photo shoots for my project tomorrow after school (since I have a working truck and everything). I have a lot of time to make up for with the project (I only have about one more week in the darkroom. The deadline for the contest is probably some time in April, so as long as I take a photo class next quarter, I should be fine as long as I can get at least two prints out in the next week).

I now know how to change a flat tire (I've known that for a little while), change a belt (even have the tool for it), change an alternator, and install a new battery. I'll be learning how to change my oil soon (Photo Girl changes her own oil, so she plans on teaching me), and pretty soon I'll be able to charge people $80 an hour to fix their cars! Not really, but it sounds cool. More women should know how to to some basic repairs on their cars. When I had to change my tire in a parking lot, I had women coming up to me just to watch (one of them told me she was glad I knew what I was doing because if it had been her, she would have been crying and calling her husband). Hmmm...Maybe I should figure out a way to teach women how to fix things on their cars...

Tomorrow I'm hanging out with The Smart One (a really book-smart friend from High School. Notice I did not say street smart) in Seattle while Himself is in his meat-cutting class. I'm also hanging out with The Hair for the photo shoot. I love days off!

M