Part 2

I did a lot of little things while on vacation in Albuquerque. First things first, though. I read the newspaper's comics pages that my mom saved for me since my last visit (seven months' worth). Then I read a year's worth of gardening magazines. (I hadn't read any during my previous visit in January.) After that, I read about eight books. Oh yeah, and I pulled weeds in the yard and pruned a couple of trees.

I also took my mom out for a few birthday meals (thanks to all those restaurant e-clubs my friend Gimpy signed up my mom for), bought groceries, and donated platelets. It turns out I also had to take her car in for service.

The "check coolant" indicator turned on, so after I let the car cool down, I looked in the reservoir. Actually, that's not quite right. I could turn the cap only 1/4 turn. My mom phoned a neighbor for help, and he came over with channel locks to turn the cap. When I told him my problem (he thought I couldn't turn it at all), he said, "Oh, you have to push down while you turn it the rest of the way," like a medicine bottle. Naturally, the car's owner's manual didn't mention that little tidbit. Razzlefrazzlesnarfin...

Anyhow, the coolant level was so low, I barely saw an orange glint in the reservoir. I poured a bunch of new coolant and water in, hopefully to a high enough level. The next day, as I drove my mom around town, the coolant warning came on again. After the engine cooled down and I checked the tank again, it was just as empty as before! Now I know next to nothing about cars (that's what mechanics are for), but even I know that the vehicle probably would not be able to make the 230 mile drive to Las Cruces the next day.

I took the car to Pep Boys. The service manager (not just a flunky) took one look at it (he had to see the engine to see if it was a special "Northstar" one, which it was) and said they had tried (!) to fix one of those problems before. It turns out that two parts of that engine are aluminum, but they're held together with metal (grammatical note: "metal" to most Hispanic New Mexicans means "steel or some other metal which is not aluminum, which you can take your cheapo beer cans in and get money for") bolts, and dissimilar metals (traditional definition of the word) don't react well. The bolts degrade, and coolant leaks into the engine and gets burned off. (This occurs rather rapidly, if my observation was at all accurate.) He said I had to take the car to the dealer because they had learned their lesson after buying the previous guy a whole new Cadillac.

The dealership hooked the car up to some sort of sensor, and an hour later, we had the answer: it was a leaking crossover gasket (whatever that is), which would cost approximately $800 to repair. Oh, and there was a tiny leak in the fuel pump, as well, but that would be cheap to fix: just $400. Hmm, pay $1,200 or have the car overheat and strand us halfway through the middle of the desert? Easy choice.

What really irks me is that cars aren't built the way they used to be. You see, my mom doesn't drive, so her car sits in the garage most of the year. Once a month, a neighbor comes over to start the car and make sure the battery doesn't run down (again -- we learned that lesson this past January). In olden days, a garage-kept, little-used car was a great thing to have. Nowadays, if you don't use a car, parts will dry up and shrink, so, ironically, not using the car means that it will break down faster. That is why my side jaunt to visit friends and check out my condo was Fri/Sat instead of Thu/Fri (which had been scheduled for Mon/Tue, which had been scheduled for Sun/Mon...).

I had a pleasant lunch with Betty on the way to Las Cruces. Then, to make the day even better, as soon as I unlocked my condo's front door and walked in, I felt (not just thought), "I'm home." Everything was where I had left it (albeit a bit dustier), but the entire atmosphere was welcoming. The condo definitely is a place I'm going to keep and return to one day.

I didn't get to see all of my friends on that visit. Thing One had the flu. Worker Bee had his daughter's fifteenth birthday party (but not a quinceanera) to handle. Thing Two was out of town. Tweety never returned my calls (and still hasn't). Gym Rat's phone was disconnected. On the brighter side, I did get to visit with G at Scoopy's, and Boss is glad to serve as my contractor to figure out what needs to be fixed on my massive, professional refrigerator.