My Wife, the Mechanic
There seems to be some kind of rule. The closer you are to leaving on a trip, the more problems you have with your vehicle.
Well, I hope that rule won’t hold true. But yesterday both the Frys and us (who will be travelling together for the first day or two north) were doing tag-team drop-offs as we took our vans to various places for repairs and tune-ups.
Both our vans still have some strange noises going on, but we’re going to hope for the best.
Yesterday I had the back door of the van temporarily repaired… no doubt we’ll need to order the actual part and get the handle replaced while we’re in Canada. But it’s opening and closing right now, so that should make it a lot easier to load and unload suitcases each night.
But we also had a ghost in the van. Without warning, the electric locks would start locking, lights would start flashing, and other strange noises would begin… especially when we were accelerating.
It was Shari that clued in. It was that little knob that detects when the sliding door is closed. Part of it had broken off, so it sometimes didn’t recognize that the door was closed, and sometimes did.
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Using an idea from Rod (who once had the same problem), she used a couple of coins and some duct tape to lessen the distance between the door and the knob, hence solving the problem! We can do something more permanent later, but for now – no more ghost!
Handy, and beautiful at the same time! 😉
17 June 2009 @ 12:27 am
the beauty of duct tape in action! i sometimes don’t get the rear hatch on our Highlander quite closed and once I had similar symptoms…when I accelerated down the street…the lights would flicker and it appeared there was a serious electrical problem…the back hatch just wasn’t quite closed. fortunately, i didn’t have any broken…just needed to close it properly.
we leave for our home assignment July 3rd and we had an unusual car problem today too…car wouldn’t start and made some really unusual sounds I’ve never heard before. turns out the battery was drained by the headlights being left on for awhile. An employee of the place we were at pulled the battery out of his truck (since there was no way to reach our batter for a jump) and some jumper cables (I had none) and with a quick jump we were back in business. whew! nothing like thinking ahead to a 600 mile trip to the border (just for starters) through remote deserts wondering if the car will have a problem or not. a definite and legitimate prayer request to make it to civilization without problem…isn’t it?
18 June 2009 @ 3:05 pm
When I prayed “the perfect” wife for you, I didn’t think about the mechanical help you’d need one day. But obviously it was no surprise to the Lord.
I think this statement would fit the wife of a missionary quite well: “Trying to define the role of a pastor’s wife is like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” 😉