|
| Lopez Island | Orcas Island | Visitor's Guide |
            
        
|
|
"ROAD TRIPS" by THE OLD SQUID |
|
Email this page to a friend Previous columnsThe Shroud of Sport Tourin |
|
"Road Trips" by The Old Squid
The Manly Art of the Oil Change
Everyone has their rituals that make no sense, the things we do that could easily be hired out or done another way; faster, safer. My Fearless Wife has a treadle sewing machine she still uses for buttons. A friend collects old cameras. Another friend who could afford new, drives a beat up old truck "just because". My idiosyncrasy is oil changes. It's "what men do" in the modern world since there are no local Indians to fight or large species to hunt to extinction. Last summer, I decided to change the oil in my Honda Accord. First, I drive to town under the pretense of "warming up the engine". Hmmm... since I'm here and since its lunch and since I smell a cheeseburger ... I hunt and gather at The Hungry Clam. I love being a modern primitive :-) I finally get home and jack the front up. The tools are laid out like a doctor ready for surgery. The creeper is ready to haul my too large mass under the car. All is going well as I drain the oil into the catch pan. The oil filter is next but its awkward as its high up in the back of the engine so its a long, tortured reach and I'm crowded under the exhaust system. I leave the drain pan under the car as the filter always spills a little oil as it's removed. I try to line everything up and viola! the oil falls in the pan with nary a drop on the floor! I'm feelin' pretty smug and that's mistake #1. Mistake #2 happens when I finally get the filter in my hot little hand. Hot because the filter is hot too! You see, I warmed things up a little too well. I guess I should have waited but it's too late now. Pinned under the car, hand looped over the hot exhaust and thru a frame member...oh s**t! The filter won't fit thru the frame member. Mistake #3, the big one happens, as I try to juggle the oily filter to my left hand and slide it between the frame and a suspension strut. My youngest son just got a video game where one of the options is something called "Bullet Time". In BT, you see the video world from the perspective of the bullet and all is in super slow motion. Think Matrix. I watch the fall of the filter in Bullet Time as it lands in 4.5 quarts of Castrol's well used finest about 6" from my face! Yeow!! Its hot and it's _really_ dirty and it stinks and its ALL over me! Did I mention that I was facing it? Of course I was. Fortunately I wear glasses and they were coated, not my eyes. Also, oil doesn't carry as much heat as water so while uncomfortable and startling, no real damage was done. My son was up at the house splitting wood and he heard the explosion of profanity. Normally, his sense of self preservation would send him to the next county to let me calm down and to remove his body as a potential target from my temper but he knew I had been under the car so he screwed his courage up and came circling down in a cautious path to see if the car had fallen on top of me. By the time he got to the shop, I'd had a chance to crawl out from under and look at myself in the side mirror and anger had turned to cackling hysteria. I looked like something out of a 3 Stooges movie. It took a bundle of shop towels and two baths, the last in a tub full of my wife's girly oils, to get the stench of used motor oil out of my beard and hair. So ends the manly art of the oil change. Will I do it differently next time? Hey, why change a great tradition:-) |
|
|
SAN JUAN ISLANDER © 2008 ABOUT US | ADVERTISING INFO | CONTACT INFORMATION |
|
|
