Back to the van

September 17, 2013 2135

            Last Thursday The Goat Man and I went to the Good Samaritan clinic in our new van.  They are not kidding when they say their appointments take up to three hours.  We were there all of three hours, but The Goat Man has been having some scary blood pressures and he needed to be seen.

            When we came out of the appointment the van’s tensioner busted and the belt fell off.  This means no cooling system for the motor and no power steering.  I actually needed his help to make tight turns.  The Goat Man’s blood pressure is through the roof and he is stressed to the max and now this.

            We limped the van about six blocks because they wanted The Goat Man to have an EKG.  Then we started are long trip home.  In an odd way it was a long day and stressful, but on the other hand it was fun hanging out with The Goat Man.

            The most important things to consider when your van does not have a working belt is the engine over heating and the battery running out because the car is unable to charge.  So, it makes sense that we would want as few things as possible to be running for our five-mile trip home.

            So, it started raining.  We had the lights, wipers, defroster, and power windows because of the rain.  The good news is that here in Florida the clouds are serious about raining and the water pools quickly.  The water runs off quickly, but during the rain it is pooled in the road and driving through this cooled the engine.  But, the van was still not charging.

            About every mile we had to pull over and wait about a half hour for the engine to cool and then move on.  At one particular stop we sat in the van with the windows up because of the rain and heard a noise in the back of the van that sounded like something flying around among the boxes.

            “What was that?”

            “I don’t know.”  The Goat Man was nowhere near as interested in the sound as I was.

            “Go see what it is.”

            “I’m not getting out in the rain.”  So, I got out of the van.  So much for my protector.  I declared something about simply walking home, but The Goat Man didn’t even look at me.  I shut the door and walked away.

            The rain had reduced to a spray and it was a lot less humid outside the van.  I walked the one block to the intersection and assessed the lights.  We had to make it through the lights.  If we were stopped at any light we were sure to overheat.

            Then I walked back to the van where The Goat Man sat unchanged and unconcerned.  I opened the hatch and located the leak and then promptly moved my books from under it.  The Goat Man then came back and fixed the molding and we moved the next mile down the road.

            It turns out that in my stress I turned the wrong direction and instead of heading toward home we headed away from it.  We had to go to Main St. before we could get to a road heading the right direction. 

            We stopped at the seven eleven, pulled the van into a safe place, and sat on the curb eating some lunch.  It was, as always, good conversation and great people watching.  I absolutely love just hanging out with The Goat Man.  He will be so much fun when we are old sitting on the porch in rocking chairs.

            We left the house at 10 a.m. and returned about 5 p.m.

            Fixing the tensioner on the van requires one bolt to be removed.  Yes, I said it was just one bolt.  We watched a YouTube video that said it was a half hour job.  Both The Goat Man and I have worked on cars, so we got to it.

            The problem with vans is that the motor is hard to get at, but this motor was doubly hard because it was crammed in a small space sideways.  The general problems we had were nothing less than frustrating.  My hands were small enough to fit, but my arms were too short to reach.  The Goat Man’s arms were long enough to reach, but his hands were too big.

            The entire day was a greasy tension filled bolt-hating kind of day.  The Goat Man did most of the work because I also have the deficit of being weaker.  With limited tools and not even a 1/32 of an inch of space I had no leverage to help me.  But, finally after almost an hour of fighting, cussing under our breath, and straining we got the belt back on.

            We almost broke into song as if we were back in the villages with Mike.  After all day the van was finally fixed.  The Goat Man jumped in the van and started it up.  It started right up and ran smooth.  Then just thirty seconds later the belt snapped off and the van stopped.

            Exactly!  Are you kidding me?  The pulley on the already broken air conditioner unit broke off.  Now we had to spend close to $400 to fix the air just so we could put the belt on.  We were done for the day.