Truck Toast

Tried writing this out a few times but I keep getting interrupted and then never get back to it.

Some crunchy toast:

Way back on Tuesday, August 30th, I was spending the day Getting Things Done. Laundry, the bathroom, dishes… just stuff in general. I had a plan to get some more bolts for the canopy of my truck as it has developed a bit of vibration. It only had about five or six bolts holding it on in the first place, and when I took it off last month I found a couple of them were stripped. So I’m now running a few bolts shorter than usual. Late afternoon, once the last load of laundry is in the drier, I head off to Canadian Tire.

After some digging around I find bolts that are at least similar in size, although I’m hoping we have some bigger washers at home. The ones they had at Canadian Tire were pretty tiny.

But all that is moot, at least for the moment.

Heading out from Canadian Tire I aim for our local Co-op to get groceries. The fridge was very, very empty. Alas, it would remain mostly empty for several days.

Turning left onto Southland across MacLeod the truck hiccups, coughs, and dies. Luckily for me the momentum of what little acceleration I did get managed to carry the truck across the intersection (eventually) and into the gas station on the corner. I tried for several minutes to get the truck started again but the best I could manage was one hideous backfire that made the gas station attendants drop to the floor in alarm. They were convinced someone was shooting a cannon at them.

The one attendant helped me push the truck into an out-of-the-way spot and I called up my usual mechanic… whose shop was closed for the day. Not sure what else to do, I called Canadian Tire and got the truck towed into their service bay. Then I grabbed some food from Safeway and took the bus home.

Later that evening Canadian Tire called up to let me know the truck had blown some vacuum seal and needed to have the spark plug wires replaced as well. I made the mistake of calling Ronya from work that night to let her in on the bad news. She was tired, having worked several extra shifts, and she had a minor meltdown. She’s been pushing herself hard over the past few months… well, really, she’s been pushing herself hard for the past few years, but up until a few months ago it was to get through school.

For the past few months she’s been pushing hard to try and get our debt load down. Having it all pulled out from under her by yet another repair bill hit a trigger.

The next day she called back and we discussed our options. She suggested she might skip her trip to crown in order to save money but I was pretty strongly against that idea. She’d had little enough fun this summer I wasn’t going to deny her a trip she’d been looking forward to for the past few months. I figured we’d make it up some way down the road.

It doesn’t help that I’m actually earning a little less than I used to receive from EI. Makes me feel like more of a sinkhole than a provider. Especially when my extremely impractical vehicle breaks down.

We picked the truck up the next day when Ronya was in town for a few hours. It seemed to work fine, although when Ronya took off for Crown I chose to use her car instead. It uses a heck of a lot less gas and I’m rather fond of the satellite radio Ronya had installed. 120 channels of music and no commercials. Bliss.

Thursday night I went to see Fantastic Four up in the North East. Not great, but not as bad as I feared it would be. Friday night Chad and Tammy treated me to a night out and we went to see Transporter 2. Fairly decent cheese, but not as good as the first one. I really hate the shaky-cam action films are using these days when they’re too lazy to spend a lot of time on fight choreography. The Bourne Supremacy is still the worst offender to date, though. A full review is in the works.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday I worked my usual shifts. Monday night, or more accurately Tuesday morning, around 3am, Ronya caromed through town on her way back from Crown. Bruised, tired, and sore she was thrilled with her weekend but not happy about their return schedule. She dumped some of her gear in the house, put some of it into her car, and immediately drove off to Brooks with the hopes of getting at least three hours of sleep before the start of her first shift.

So it was down to just my truck and me. I’d only driven it home from the garage and out to the gym once since I got it back from the garage. Tuesday evening I drove up to visit Connie and Colin before my midnight shift. I stopped off at Safeway to get some snacks for the evening.

When I came out of the grocery store the truck flat out refused to start. It turned over just fine, but none of the cylinders seemed to be firing. At all.

One week, almost to the hour, and my truck is once again just a massive lump of inert metal on rubber wheels. Believe me, the urge to reduce it to component parts on the spot was very, very enticing.

Instead I walked out to Connie and Colin’s place and called yet another tow truck. I’d forgotten to leave my keys with the truck, though, so I had to stop in at Canadian Tire the next morning to drop them off.

Yesterday was a very staccato kind of day. I was up at 11am on Tuesday for some reason and couldn’t get back to sleep. I did manage a couple of naps during the day but for the most part I was just up, working out, doing stuff. Truck dies. I work the midnight to 8am shift and then, on the way home I had to stop off at Canadian Tire to drop off my keys. Then I slept for about three hours before getting up and heading downtown for another interview. The interview went well, so I feel pretty good about it. Took transit home and finally called Ronya to break the bad news. Canadian Tire had called me to say the distributor needed to be replaced. Cheaper than the vacuum seal, but not by much. Interesting that the distributor should fail right after the spark plug wires are replaced. I’m suspicious, but I can’t argue since I don’t know a damned thing about engines.

Ronya was unhappy be resigned. Some day, I swear, we’re going to get ourselves a brand new car with a massive warranty. And then we’ll trade it in one day before the warranty expires.

After that I went back to bed for a couple of hours, getting back up with just enough time to catch the bus in to work again.

I am *so* going to sleep today.

Hopefully we’ll pick the truck up again before I have to work on Sunday. Hopefully it will actually be fixed this time.