Remember
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
Remember my daughter's '62 Olds?
Remember Reggie, the guy who sold my navel lint
on eBay for $200? Well, all of these things are converging tomorrow in an
astonishing moment of freakish synchronicity.
See the thing is, I was excited about my
daughter buying this classic car. And I want to learn to work on cars, you know,
like in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where you find deep meaning
in tasks that seem mundane, and you know a lot about cars and fixing things and
are really cool and deep and manly all at the same time. I want that. You know,
that Zen kind of car fixing thing. And I did replace the starter on this car,
which is a good beginning, especially since those old starters are the size of
small water heaters. Only now we have transmission problems. And it turns out
that
this particular Oldsmobile has a unique, aluminum motor, so we
either get this transmission fixed or we're pretty much up the proverbial creek
without the proverbial paddle.
Now as it turns out, there is this old guy
named Bob in my town, who is apparently the transmission guru for classic cars
in our area. Finding him was kind of a Zen thing in itself. But Bob is now too
old to take transmissions out of cars, so you have to take it out yourself and
drive it over to his house. Then he does his magic, which apparently includes
contacting some even older guy in Maine who is really grouchy but knows how to
find impossible parts for transmissions. If Bob can get the parts, they say he
can fix anything.
So the thing is, I'm taking out a transmission
tomorrow.
[Those who know me are laughing their
proverbial asses off, so I'll wait a moment for the laughter to die down]
You finished? May I continue, please?
The good news: Reggie freakin Regan,
who along with making bat houses
and selling weird stuff on eBay is really good with cars and fixing things. So
Reg is coming over tomorrow with his cool tools, and we're going to take out the
transmission, or "drop the tranny" as I like to say when I'm with Reggie.
The way I see it, what's the worst that could
happen? Well, I could get my hands crushed or something, but probably not. We'll
get dirty. We'll drink some beer. I'll take pictures with the transmission after
we wrestle it into submission and pull it out of the car. Grrrrr. Hey, life is
an adventure, right? You gotta embrace it, roll with the punches, step up to the
plate, or at least whine enough so that Reggie will save the day.
rlp
Foy Update - Part two is almost
done....just...ooh, almost. And then this transmission thing happened, so I'm
losing my writing time on Tuesday. Stay tuned.
