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And my car…

Ok, so the latest on my car is that it was no big deal. I don’t think I could fully explain what happened to it if you were here in person and I could wave my hands around and draw pictures. So forget trying to type it all out. But the fact is that the sinking cenote that I hit the other day was not the problem. The problem was weirder and more complex than that. And not my fault.

My hubby was able to fix the car, easily, when he got home that evening. And while he was messing with it he got the squeaky bearings on the alternator pulley fixed. And so now the car is running great, all fixed, all better, and the squeak it had is gone too.


My engine & my husband

I’ve always loved my cars, well most of them anyway. My first car was a VW Rabbit, it was a lemon, a real money-sink. But it was a gift of freedom from my mom. When it came time for me to sell it I didn’t have the heart. So I put an ad in the paper that said “Free to good home, 1980 Rabbit, runs”. For 3 days men called me and told me I was an idiot. I told them they weren’t a “good home”. Then a mechanic called, his brother-in-law was driving him crazy borrowing his car all the time; he could fix it up and give it to the annoying brother-in-law. I liked the guy, and he “got it” he understood that I loved my car, that this was a labor of love for me. And it was a labor of love for him too, to help his brother-in-law. I gave him the car, and I never looked back.

After that I owed 4 Hondas in a row, I like small cars that sip gas. All of my Hondas were great cars, especially the 1991 Civic Sedan, something about it was great. And when it was time to sell it I just told my mechanic that I was thinking of selling it and he brought me a buyer 2 hours later who offered me $800 usd more than I thought the car was worth. But the mechanic knew I had babied that car, he knew it was a bargain.

At one point in the middle of my Honda reign I also bought a Jeep CJ-7. What a piece of shit that was. But you could park it on top of anything. I loved it in the city, it was big and black and had chrome all over it. It was sexy and ridiculous and I loved it. But it was a bigger lemon than the Rabbit, it need constant work, and I finally decided that I could learn to fix it myself or get rid of it. So I decided to sell it.

The first serious buyer was a 16 year old who had just gotten his license. Daddy was rich, daddy’s kid wanted this Jeep. But the kid couldn’t drive. I saw how he drove it and I KNEW without question that this child would die in this vehicle. It was one of those things I could just see. And I couldn’t sell it to him. My mother’s heart wouldn’t let me. I told dad to go buy a safer vehicle for his kid, one that didn’t need roll bars on account of it wasn’t likely to tip over in every corner. Dad was livid, he literally jumped up and down screaming at me. And then he offered me an extra $1000 usd for the Jeep. I told him I wouldn’t sell him a vehicle that I was sure would be the death of his son. He said that was not my business. But it was, because I knew it would happen and I could prevent it. I ended up selling it to a 30 year old hard-drive engineer who knew how to drive and who thought it would be a chick-magnet. I could live with that, and it probably was.

So now I careen around Cancun in my Renault. And it’s everything people say about French cars, it’s uppity, it’s picky, it’s fragile. And it’s fast. And it handles so well that I’ve learned to drive with more precision than before because the car can handle it. Except for being a terribly boring color this car is my favorite of all cars I’ve owned so far. And now it’s fixed so I want to invent a reason to drive it today, but truly I have nowhere to go today except possibly the grocery store which is only 3 blocks away…boring.

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