images of broken light - thoughts on the art of sedan maintenance, part iii

photo: flickr

The war had begun. I stood face to face with the forces of decay and destruction, armed with only a five-piece tool set from Wal-Mart.

Clearly, I needed reinforcements.

A kind man named Paul posted step-by-step directions with pictures on the internet on how to replace a window regulator (yes, I had learned my terms) in a car the same model as mine. This resource would have helped immensly, had I any power tools or mechanical expertise at all.

So I called Mike. Mike was my roommate for a week in India when we traveled with Sandals Church last fall.

I first met Mike in our India Team training sessions. My anxiety level had already peaked at even the idea of returning to the filthy, disease-ridden motherland, but the added bonus of having to acquaint myself with the ten strangers on my team before we left only further increased my displeasure.

When I arrived at the India Team first training session at the Carters' house, I made myself a nametag as instructed and then sat awkwardly while quietly loathing my teammates because their unfamiliar presence intruded upon my familiar introverted solace. To pour lemon juice on the paper cut, our team leader Dave then required us to participate in an ice breaker in which we learned and shared five things about a teammate.

I picked Mike because he was a dude. The bright green dragon tattoo that enveloped his arm promised at least that the uncomfortable introduction might be followed by an interesting story.

Little did we know that this began a friendship that would become quite meaningful to both of us (and would apparently involve automobile maintenance).

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restless wind inside a letter box - thoughts on the art of sedan maintenance, part ii.

photo: flickr

We had two windows down, one in each car, and we applied our ghetto-fabulous packing tape solution to them both.

After several reapplications of the tape, we learned some reinforcing tricks that kept the windows up higher for longer amounts of time. That's right, we upgraded to ghetto-fabulous 2.0.

Though the noisiness created by the unsealed window annoyed me thoroughly at first, it offended less after a few miles - thank goodness for the cocktail party effect. The air conditioner and stereo system worked a little bit harder, and life was fairly easily managed.

Somewhere along the line, the cars started popping headlight bulbs like they were champagne corks at 50 Cent's birthday party. Then soon after, my car became an exhibitionist, letting loose some of its molding and showing off far too much undercarriage.

I was getting worked over by the Chaos Theory, and I had neither the cash nor the mechanical expertise to fight back.

Southern California's sickeningly thick haze of smog lifted for a couple of days a few weeks ago. Lindsey and I decided to take advantage of it and drove with the windows down whenever we were not on the freeway.

We arrived at our frequent date-night destination, and I walked around the car to greet Lindsey at her car door. Noticing a gap, she asked if I had forgotten to roll up the windows. I had not forgotten. Yet another window motor had died before our very eyes.

Now, having one window taped up is a perfectly acceptable symbol of shrewd newlywed economic resource management, but having two windows taped up is just plain sad. Not to mention, my poor, little factory stereo felt the stress and had trouble keeping up with the noisy competition.

I scoured eBay the next day in search of cheap replacement parts (and free shipping), filled my virtual shopping cart, and let PayPal do its thing.

Entropy had crept a little too far into my sphere, and I determined to return some order to the world.

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endless rain into a paper cup - thoughts on the art of sedan maintenance, part i

photo: flickr

Owning a car means watching entropy happen right before one's eyes.

Last summer, our now six-year-old friend Thomas Carter sat in the backseat of Lindsey's car disobediently fidgeting with the power-window switch as Lindsey carted the boy to his swim lesson. The electrical-sophistication of our late-eighties model Nissan crumbled under the weight of Thomas' curiosity, and the window's motor failed while in the downward position.

A few weeks later, while I was in India, Lindsey again shuttled the young squire about town as a favor to his mother Dawn whose husband was also away leading the India team. Lindsey chose to use my vehicle because it was newer had no permanently lowered windows. Thomas was placed in the passenger side rear seat, the same position he had occupied in the Nissan. Much to the child's dismay, however, the right rear window had never worked in my car, not even for one day since the purchase date.

Mere facts of historical dysfunction posed no threat to Thomas' resolute inquisitiveness, and he promptly willed the window down with a mere flick of his finger. Unfortunately, his resolve did not extend to the retraction of the window, and it too stuck in the downward position.

Six months prior to these mechanical debacles, I was retrieving my backpack from the backseat after returning home from a long day's work. As I closed the door, the driver's side rear window slid lifelessly down its tracks. The dealer quoted the repair at four hundred dollars, but I got the price down under two hundred by buying the parts on the internet and having a mechanic install them.

Unfortunately, at the time of the youngest Carter's great window massacre, I had been unemployed for nearly four months, and there was no end in sight.

So we mustered up the most affordable and technologically advanced solution we could . . . packing tape. It wasn't art, but it had to be done.

p.s. Just so we are clear, we still love Thomas and his fidgety, little fingers.

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