Sears Saga With A Happy Ending

Smokey made a bad, bad noise!

Fueled up and ready to go

0430 Monday 07.05.10
Woke and got ready to leave Knoxville. O’ Smokey is fully fueled, fluids and air all checked, and everything packed but my toothbrush and laptop.

0445
Underway

0600 Jelico Mountain, TN
O’ Smokey running good. Didn’t even need to downshift on the steepest grade. Engine temp nominal. Just starting to get light.

0730 Berea, KY
O’ Smokey made a bad bad noise! Losing power. Something must have let go. Luckily, I’m right at an exit. Coast down the ramp and into a gas station.

0745
Checked oil. Oil gone! Filled oil. It’s not leaking out. Doesn’t want to start. Decide to have breakfast at restaurant next door.

0845
Started diesel. Still not leaking. Bad noise is gone. Decide to try going again.

0900
Didn’t get far. Bad bad noise is back! Made it from gas station across the street to the Days Inn motel.

Broke down right at an exit

0915
Called Joe Golder. Joe says sit tight and he’ll drive down and tow me to Ypsi with his van. Needs to take care of a couple things first.

0930
Forecast is for record heat around 100°, Decide to rent a motel room at Dasy Inn and keep cool. Also has complimentary WiFi.

1100
Joe called. Oil change guy says he has the wrong tire on the back left. Got to go back to Sears.

1300 Sears is glad tire mistake was caught and no one got hurt! Put the right tire on the left rear and gave Joe a coupon for a free oil change for his inconvenience.

1500
Joe and his 3 dogs are on the road. Estimates it’s a 6 hour drive. It’s hot out. I’m glad to be in a room with an air conditioner.

Joe & dogs & cramped motel room

2100
Joe called. Was passing a truck. Sears didn’t tighten the lug nuts and the wheel with the new tire came off just north of Lexington, KY, about 40 miles north. Brakes and hub are wrecked bad. Joe & dogs shaken but OK. KY Dept of Safety vehicle found the tire— actually caught it on video bouncing south on the northbound lane. Joe is Having van towed to Sears in Lexington.

2110
Joe called and wants to know if motel is pet friendly.

2120
I called Joe and told him motel is pet friendly. Ky Dept of Safety vehicle is bringing Joe and 3 dogs to the motel.

2200
Joe and 3 dogs arrive thanks to some assistance from Michael Martin of the KY Dept. of Transportation. It’s cozy: Me & Joe, 3 dogs, and 1 bed. AC works good.

Axle fixed with temporary wheel

0800
Sears has 3 managers working on Joe’s van: manager in A2 is expediting the insurance claim, 1 manager is ordering parts from the Lexington store, another is on the repair work. Sears tells Joe to keep all receipts for towing, motel, meals, taxis, etc.

0830 Tues 07.06.10 Days Inn, Berea, KY
Motel has complimentary breakfast.

1130
Decide we need a room for the day. Move to room with 2 beds.

1300
Sears has the parts.

1630
Walked to a nice restaurant for dinner. Good food. Dry county.

1700
Sears called. Van is ready. Can’t match rim. Will use a temporary rim and get new rims back in A2.

O'Smokey hooked up and ready to be towed to MI

1800
Joe took a taxi to Lexington Sears to get van.

1930
Joe is back. I have the tow bar ready on the front of my little pick up. We’re hooked up and ready to roll. Van doesn’t have AC. We are going to wait until dark to travel so the dogs won’t be too hot.

2050 I-75 Northbound
Cool enough to drive. On the road in Joe’s van with O’ Smokey in tow.

0100 Wed 07.07.10 Cincinnati, OH
Unbelievable middle of the night stop and stop traffic jam!

0200 North of Cincinnati
Looked like traffic was moving again— then a couple minutes later it’s jammed up again. Dang. Could have gotten on an alternate route.

0300 Dayton, OH
Traffic finally moving again. Longest traffic jam I can remember— and in the middle of the night. Nothing bad— just miles and miles of construction. Obama buck at work!

Been thinking I should bike more. Careful what you wish for!

0500 Ypsilanti, MI
Arrived safe and sound at Joe’s place.

1100 Fri 07.09.10 Ann Arbor, MI
Sears reimbursed Joe for all his expenses related to the wheel coming off. They also ordered some rims to replace his custom rim that can’t replaced.

1800 07.25.10 Ypsilanti, MI
Joe’s rims arrived and Sears has installed them. Joe likes them better then the ones he had before. A story with a happy ending. Ain’t that nice? Interesting to have dealt with a corporation that didn’t make you hire a lawyer to get them to do what’s right. Good for Sears.

A couple weeks after Joe's misadventure, Sears replaced the busted wheel with 4 new rims.

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August 27, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Summer Tour 10′: Knoxville

Summer Tour

O' Smokey: 81' VW diesel— so far so good.

1st Destination: Knoxville

Timed my arrival in Knoxville to coincide with my cousin Mark’s annual 4th of July block party. This is the 10th. I’ve been invited every year. About time I made one.

Travel: Ol’ Smokey

Drove one of the back ways over the mountains— up through Boone and over to Johnson City. It was pretty and pleasant and took about as long as going the expressway with a lot less traffic.

The primary motivation for the route is that my 81′ VW pick up is not a good mountain climber. Beyond a certain grade, I must just drop down to 2nd gear and burn a lot of oil and I didn’t want to get run over by a semi-truck on the main route.

Music: Karaoke

Chicken Wing Cook-Off: 1st & 2nd Place

At my cousin Mark’s house in Knoxville, I learned that they weren’t having a band this year. Instead, the plan was to try karaoke. He showed me a tiny home karaoke machine that they planned to use.

I said ‘No. That won’t do.” Told Mark we needed a PA and volunteered to handle it. The PA came from All Occasions Rental and I used my own karaoke software and 10k songs left over from my American Legion project in Sanford a couple years ago.

The weather was perfect and the karaoke was a big hit. Everyone liked it better than having a band.

Folks arriving for fireworks

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July 4, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Continuing Car Saga

03.07.09

Ongoing Frustration

I’m still suffering frustration with my disabled Escort.  Diagnosis: no spark.  All the ignition parts seem to have failed at once! Apparently, the coil failed sending a high voltage spike back through the low voltage side cooking everything with a computer chip in it.  The last part for me to change is the stator which is inside the distributor so I’ve ordered a new distributor…

I tested one of the new parts I bought and have discovered that it may not be up to specs.  Shit.  How much time did I waste on that?

Luckily, I’ve got the smoke bomb to drive.  It’s frustrating that I spent all that effort rebuilding the diesel engine in my little pick up only to have the new piston rings fail to seat.  I’ve actually gotten some pretty good advice on how to deal with that situation from several different sources.  Stay tuned. Hopefully I will have a great story to tell about how I fixed it (or maybe blew it up Ç;-).

Weather

At least it is a great day outside!  Forsythia have been blooming for about 3 weeks, but the best is yet to come.  The past week has been like Michigan during summer.  The prettiest part of spring comes in April, but that is also the pine pollen season, so everyone here always hopes for a rainy spring to wash the pine pollen away still, it makes everything turn green for a couple weeks and folks with allergies suffer miserably.

I should be fixing my car, but instead I’m on on the computer.  I don’t care much for car repair.  And I try to get some work done on the story everyday.

Family

The generation of our parents is coming to a close.  I think on Mom’s side there is only Uncle Bob (Bill’s twin) and Aunt Pat— both in their 80s.  I have one aunt on my father’s side and her husband.  After they are gone, we become the old farts in the family.

I want to go to MI this summer and visit my friends and family there.

Sanford

Other than living alone, things are good here and living alone isn’t terrible, I just prefer sharing meals with others.  As long as I’m house sitting here, it is a hard choice to leave.  I am fulfilling my primary vocation, and that is to write.  Here I can afford the time.  Elsewhere I may not, you know how life can get in the way.  I’m over 3 years into this story project.  The notion of all those thousands and thousands of hours becoming a waste has become a motivation in itself.

I hate to be restless.  I am enjoying one of my best creative phases ever.  But I am restless.  This situation will end sooner or later whether I leave it or not, but once I do leave, the paradigm will shift.  There is opportunity here that I will give up if I leave before it ends.

One house showing since Labor Day!  Of course, someone could make an offer on the place tomorrow in which case all of the above considerations would become mute points.  Meanwhile, I’m playing ping pong every week, supporting myself (for the first time in years!), playing lot’s of music, and most importantly, getting as much writing done as I am capable of doing.  It’s a pretty good gig.

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March 7, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Economic Downdraft

02.27.09

Computer Upgrade

Ran out of room on my laptop drive. Between pictures and karaoke, it ate ti all up. I need to have the karaoke on the laptop so I don’t have to carry extra drives, power supplies, and back up power supplies. Swapped out the original drive 120gb drive in my laptop for a 500 gb unit.  Spent the last few days putting things like my mail accounts back in order.  It’s been traumatic switching everything over: passwords, serial numbers, eMail files, bookmarks, signatures, working files, authorizations— phew.  I really needed the larger drive, but underestimated the scope of the changeover.  A pleasant surprise was how much the cost of the drives has come down!  The one I bought was $0.24/gb delivered!

Weather

In the 70s yesterday.  Today 60° and we are waiting on a snow storm.

Car Troubles

An unpleasant surprise came last week when my car went kaputnik on the way back from Sam’s in Fayetteville.  The chip I thought was bad in fact tested bad, but replacing it didn’t get ‘er going again. Hmmm.  Don’t want to fix stuff that isn’t broken.  When it warms up the end of the week, I’ll start at the fuse box and go through it with a meter and a ‘hot-or-not’.

Meanwhile, I’m driving my little 4 cylinder diesel pick up truck.  It isn’t as comfortable as the car, but the mileage it gets more than makes up for the differences in fuel prices.

Losing Friends

I hear of a friend passing now and then, but mostly I learn about deaths when I return to Ypsi— and the longer I’m gone, the more likely it is— this time I’ve been absent a year.  It’s weird going back because sometimes the blows are big, so I end up grieving, but it’s all old news to everyone else.  I guess the price of longevity is ever more frequent heartache as our friends and family go on before us…

Depression

Seems like no one wants to say it, but it looks from here like the U.S. is in an economic depression.  They happen.  It’s part of man’s boom and bust nature.  Someday our civilization will go the same way— all before have.  Anyway, credit was at the heart of the 1929 bust.  In 1999, the veto proof republican congress was lobbied to repeal the 1933 Glass-Steagal act that prevented banks from commingling their activities with insurance and investments.  At that time, they also deregulated the banks (remember? It was unregulated margin selling that brought the financial system down in 1929).  In 1999, there were credible warnings that what was being done would lead to another crash.  Well, it only took 9 years.  The actual instrument that brought down investment banking (an illegal combination before 99′) is called a ‘credit default swap’.  Now, all those giant unregulated investment banks are out of business— but the laws that created them haven’t changed.

In the bigger world, as long as the gasoline and electricity stay on, and there is some food in the stores, I think our civilization will get through the current phase more or less in tack.  And some good changes can come of it all.

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February 27, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

VW Oil Loss

3.14.06

My little truck is running great, but it is losing oil at an alarming rate.  Doesn’t leak on the ground at idle and isn’t blowing it out the tail pipe.  Must be a gasket leak on the back side of the engine where I can’t see it!  I could get discouraged, but then I remember what a nice day it is and there are people in the world with real problems!

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March 14, 2006 | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »

Rabbit Pump

3.1.6

Changed Injector Pump

Changed the injector pump on my VW Rabbit diesel pick up today.  I’m getting pretty good at changing injector pumps.  The injector pump is one of the few parts that have not been replaced or rebuilt.  Since I started out with 5 pumps, I figured at least one should be good to go for a while.  Right?

Got diesel fuel all over me.  Seems like no matter how much I wash, the smell won’t go away.  Oh well.  Had to be done…

I want to drive the truck up to the mountain and do some volunteer work on the Appalachian Trail (A.T.).

.

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March 1, 2006 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Cooperative Society

1256 CDT Thurs 5/16/02

Yesterday, I helped Jimmy fix a diesel tractor for a neighbor.  He’d been working on a Massey Ferguson 175 since before I got here.  I found a leak in the canister for the power steering pump filter— had been set in wrong— then over tightened.  Plus the filter was trash.  One of the compression fittings for the diesel fuel lines was leaking and had caused a fire in the alternator (a retro fitted GM) and it had burned up.  Sealed that by adding some Teflon tape.  Went around tightening other things like loose injector lines.  It’s a nice tractor and the engine sounds great.  I think the 175 stands for cubic inches— which looks about the right size.

I like fixing things; sort of a way to contribute something to what’s going on.  Last week I fixed Jimmy’s dad’s refridgerator— which had plugged up, then iced up, then leaked all over the place ruining some adjacent wood work.  The hardest part of fixing it was figuring out how to take it apart.  Some of the things I’ve fixed are projects that Jimmy is doing for someone else that has given him something, though no one really seems to keep score.  Today, we are working on a go-cart for the fellow that let us come over and go catfishing.

Though everyone around here seems to have their bills paid, there also seems to be a lack of cash.  So when someone needs or wants something, people just give it to each other— but not in trade— they just give it.  It’s like the whole local economy is illiterate in the sense that material things, like useful information, are shared in a social to make life better and lessen one’s burdens— instead of reading fro knowledge or buying things from each other in a paid for economy.  Much more than city people, these country folk are a very cooperative society.  People do charge and get paid for things, but it’s like there are 2 classes—  and if you are among those who *helps out*, money is a taboo.

I really dig it.  Not much money is spent in the grocery store.  These folks cook, catch, shoot, grow, build, modify, repair just about everything they need.  And a big part of their connection to each other is freely sharing  the skills they need to get things done.

So, though I’m a Yankee, and I’ve got book learned (high school drop out is a meaningless notion), I am now accepted among those who “help out” others.  I suppose helping is a key to assimilating into any society, but here, it is also a foundation of local the community— unlike anywhere I’ve been except perhaps the U.P. of MI.  So while the rest of the world seems to be in a mad heat to quest for the almighty buck, here the rejection of education is coupled with a rejection of money— both are measured as an outside evil.

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May 16, 2002 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »