I’m a glass half empty kind of guy. Unless I am driving a new car or renting a car I’m not that concern with the car breaking down. But taking an older car on a long trip I have a tendency to keep looking at the gauges, hoping nothing going to happen. So far, so good, two hours into this trip and everything is just fine. The car is running good, the kids are sleeping now, and it’s just a nice pleasant drive.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!!!
My pleasant drive just turned into my worst fear, CAR TROUBLE. It sounded like someone was banging the engine with a hammer: bang, bang, bang. “Carl, the cars making a funny noise” Bonnie says. I know funny noises when I hear them, people farting in public, someone snoring in an auditorium, those are funny noises. My engine blowing up is not a funny noise. I pulled the car over to the side of the thruway as quick as possible.
As I turned off the engine you could hear a pin drop in the car. Everyone realized our little camping excursion was just canceled. A thousand thoughts flew thru my mind in a matter of seconds. What are we going to do now? How do I get everybody to a hotel? Who’s going to fix the car at 11:00PM on a holiday weekend? How can we even call for help? Yeah, I know what your thinking, but this was before cell phones were even invented. Where’s a state trooper when you need one?
If I was Captain Kirk, all I would have to do is call my chief engineer Mr. Scott. Mr. Scott, go to the engine room and see what you can do. Unfortunately I don’t have a Chief Engineer. I do have a wife who thinks she’s the chief but she’s no engineer. Sometimes Kirk had to do the job himself. It’s time to get out of the car and take a look at the engine. Where did I put that flashlight?
Just as I was saying where I put that flashlight, it dawned on me exactly where the flashlight was, buried in one of the nooks and crannies. Somewhere were the sun doesn’t shine.
This is not going to be fun.
I get out of the car, its dark outside, and all I hear are cars racing by a 60 MPH’s. I had no idea, getting out of your car on a thruway is that scary. It’s like a race side seat at the Daytona 500 except there’s no big wall or fence to protect you. You’re just standing on the apron, unprotected, with cars whizzing by 10 feet away. Maybe I should have let Bonnie get the flashlight?
I started unpacking all the stuff from the back of the car that I had previously packed two hours prior. After about 10 minutes, I found the flashlight right where I thought it would be, in my toolbox, in the right nook and the left cranny. Good guess. All the stuff that I unpacked I laid out behind the car. The people driving by must have thought I was going to set up camp on the side of the thruway.
I popped the hood and took a quick look, everything looked fine. I really didn’t expect to find anything because I thought the noise from the engine was internal, not external. Just for the heck of it I looked under front of the car. I’m lying under the front of the car pointing the flashlight upwards when the gates of heaven opened up to showed me my problem. There it was, illuminated by the beam of the flashlight, glistening in its glory; a spark plug, barely hanging by a thread off of the spark plug wire. It took a few seconds to analyze the data just presented to me. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought I was hallucinating.
After I came to my senses I took another look. Sure enough the spark plug was dangling under the engine, hanging from its own wire. In that brief moment, overwhelming joy filled my heart, not from finding the engine problem, but from being able to fix the engine problem. Apparently when I replaced the sparkplugs I forgot to tighten one of them. I wonder if there’s a why to blame Bonnie for this? Luckily I brought my spark plug socket with the tool kit. After a few minutes the spark plug was back in place…. but not the camping gear. It was time to play Tetris again. 30 minutes later and full of sweat, I was back at the helm. “Take us to warp factor 1 Mr. Sulu.” Off we go again.
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