2022-08-10 — From Cursed to Adventure

Do you think days can just be… cursed? I mean… there are days where pretty much everything seems to go wrong. And I just wonder… “gosh, how is it possible for all these crazy things to go wrong in one day?!?!”

Today was one of those days… so much went sideways, from the very beginning. First thing that happened, I was finally about to buy my tickets to New Zealand, and when I went to pull up the flights, the deal was gone. 😢

I was super disappointed. I was hemming and hawing for days. I thought to myself. If I’m gonna go to New Zealand, how can I go all the way over there and not go to Australia?!?! But if I go to Australia, I… don’t have a clue what all I’d go see or how long I should spend there? I know that tippy top on my Australian bucket list is Ningaloo Reef on the west coast. I know the Great Barrier Reef is world famous–the one everyone has heard of… But many years ago in my 20s when I was planning a trip to Australia, I remember reading about Ningaloo Reef, and I was like, no, that’s the reef I want to see. Not that I don’t want to see the Great Barrier Reef, but Ningaloo, that one has my soul written all over it–at least, from what I’ve read about it.

So… that’s tippy top, but that’s on the west coast. That’s like southern Oregon vs South Carolina (comparative geography). That’s… quite a distance. And the road between… that’s… a heck of a long ways through the rugged, rather empty, Australian outback.

🙃

Or I could fly… but you miss all the… outback in between! 🙃

Anyway, so I was super bummed this morning having lost that opportunity.

Then I realized I’d forgotten my water and was also out of workday munchables.

Erg.

Then the parts supplier delivery people were late, not by a lot, but late still, so we had to wait for them to get everything in, so that took some time. Then after getting to the first job (which started an hour later than I’d originally hoped), we found that the parts ordered were damaged out of the box (bent inside their packaging). So I drove 20 minutes to Rogers because they were the closest other store to have the gasket set. But when they pulled it off the shelf, it was worse than the set I’d already ordered. Why? Because someone decided it would be best to fold the cardboard box completely in half, and stuff it on the shelf.

Yeah… not gonna do so well when you fold stuff in half.

So… then I went to another store and finally found a set there that was decent enough to use.

In the meantime, I was buying a plane ticket for my mom to come back to Arkansas (she goes back to Utah tomorrow and then will fly back to Arkansas a few weeks later), but I managed to accidentally click the wrong departure option, which have my mom a 6-hour layover instead of a short layover.

Ugh. So I called Frontier Airlines (dirt cheap tickets, by the way, if you can handle flying with just a personal item, no carry on, no checked baggage, etc. Mom’s ticket home from Utah was only $79, and I’ve seen tickets from Salt Lake to Vegas for like $19 and Salt Lake to Denver for like $25. Pretty sweet). Anyway, so I called Frontier, after taking a bit to locate an actual phone number for them. Gratefully, they were willing to give me credit toward a new ticket, so after a few self-made hassles, I finally got that taken care of and got the correct ticket purchased for my mom.

By the time I got back to Malaki, whom I’d left working on the first car, it was time for me to skidaddle quickly over to the second car, which was a pre-purchase inspection that they wanted done at 1 p.m. Specific times are super hard as a mobile mechanic (except for the first car of the day. That’s easy to have at a specific time). And today was no different, having to leave one job in the middle to get that one done. So I again left Malaki to work on the car (2005 Infiniti G35 that he wanted the valve cover gaskets replaced on).

The inspection went as normal for the first 40 minutes. Then something happened on the test drive that I’ve never had happen. The car, a 2013 Mercedes something or other, broke down on the test drive, misfiring so badly I didn’t want to keep driving it even the mile and a half or so back to where we’d started from. So, the mom of the girl I was doing the inspection for grudgingly came to pick us up (she was at the original starting place, but was annoyed with her daughter, so she didn’t want to pick us up). Anyway, she finally decided she was willing to come, so we didn’t have to walk the mile and a half back. But the daughter needed to get back to work, so I just had them drop me off on a nearby road, and I ran the probably quarter mile or so from there back to my work van.

After that, I finally got back to Malaki, and we spent another couple of hours or so finishing up the Infiniti. Took almost 8 hours from start to finish on a job that was only like 2.5 hours. 😬

Those days happen, though.

Got that one done–job one (which basically turned into job two) at almost 6 p.m. 😶 From there we met a couple from Kansas City that had just dropped their daughter off at school at the UofA, and their car started leaking coolant badly on the way back, so not wanting them to be stranded, we met them at the AutoZone in Bentonville. Turned out to be a super bad water pump leak (in a 2013 Ford Escape 1.6). I gave a pretty hefty discount because I felt bad that it was going to be an expensive fix that we couldn’t do ourselves right there (water pump and timing stuff… big big job. Like 6+ hours, and we just don’t do timing as a mobile service). So I gave them a huge discount, gave them some good referrals, and that was that.

Then we went over to another lady who was stranded. She’d just gotten off work at the hospital, and her car died on the way home. Another Ford Focus. Not sure what it is about Focuses lately. I haven’t worked on that many over the last 6 years, but in the last couple weeks, I think we’ve worked on… 4 or 5?

Nutty.

Anyway, she needed an alternator but elected not to have us do the repair. She decided to tow it somewhere else. Little does she know that she’ll likely get charged a good bit more at most other places she takes it to, and she’ll need to pay for the tow to those places, but it’s her choice–or the person’s on the phone that she was talking to.

I gave her a discount as well because we weren’t there for very long at all.

I give so many discounts.

Finally, we went to the Honda Fit that had the bad radiator out of the box. It went ok. Malaki is still learning how to keep track of everything that’s been done, so that when he does the once over after we’re all finished, he remembers everything that’s been done, so he can double check it today. He missed getting some hose clamps in their proper positions, so when we put it back together and started the engine, it started leaking right away from the improperly clamped hoses, but he was able to get the clamps back in their proper place afterward despite the awkward place they were in. He also missed plugging a sensor back in that needed to be plugged in. Part of what contributed to that was having taken it all apart several days ago, and it’s not easy to remember everything days later. That’s one of the crappy things about getting bad parts out of the box: It increases the down time between trips to the car, which increases the level of difficulty remembering what all is what.

Malaki is gonna work on strategies for remembering everything that’s been done, so he can go over everything thoroughly at the end of a job to make sure it’s all set and ready to go.

In the meantime, he’s been night-and-day difference better at looking stuff up and making sure he’s checking before he does things. He’s not perfect yet, but he’s doing so much better. Quick learner.

Once he’s at the point where looking everything up from beginning to end and following the service instructions, and once he’s got solid strategies down for making sure everything is put back on exactly as it needs to be, he can start doing jobs on his own. He’ll still need help because of the lack of experience, but he can just slowly work his way through jobs. I’m betting another couple of months, and he’ll be ready to go out on his own–provided he keeps working hard to learn about what he’s doing. He has a great opportunity to get my 6-years of hard-won experience and to stuff it in his own brain a lot sooner than I was able to, having to learn on my own from my beginnings.

After we got done with the last job, I headed home. My spirits were a good bit better with the day finally done (about 8:30 ish).

At the moment, it’s 3:22 a.m.

Why?

Well… because I came home and decided to poke around on the New Zealand/Australia flight deals. I started just plugging in dates and times and locations, and what did I find? Well… I found that New Zealand by itself was a good bit more expensive than the deals that were still there just two days ago, but what I did find was that the New Zealand/Australia trip was only slightly more expensive. Maybe even cheaper, honestly. I don’t remember.

So… I had to make a decision. No trip… or maybe just New Zealand for more money than it could have been, or… I could just add Australia to the trip, make it a really long trip, and see Australia.

So… I spent probably 3 hours trying to figure out things I’d want to see in Australia, so I could make a general outline of what I wanted to do and thus know which city/ies to fly in and out of. At first, I was going to fly into Melbourne and out of Brisbane (looping all the way around the country but skipping most of the east coast (skipping Sydney and all the stuff north and south of Sydney between Brisbane and Melbourne, respectively). I’m not a city person, so… there’s not much interest at all in going to Sydney, but at the same time, do I really want to miss all the cool things between Sydney and those other cities?

In the end, I decided the answer was “no.” I don’t want to miss all that stuff, so Sydney being the cheapest flight hub, I decided to fly both into and out of Sydney, and I’ll try and do a big loop around. If it’s possible to loop around the entire country, I might do that. If it’s not, I’ll loop around half the country (bisecting it in the middle by going through Alice Springs on the way to Darwin–or something like that).

So what’s my itinerary?!?!

I chose a rather… long trip. Fly to Auckland on November 15th. Bum around the north island until I want to go to the south island (think Lord of the Rings mountains. That’s the south island). Then I’ll hop a ferry to the south island, piddle my way around the absolutely gorgeous countryside for a good little while. Then on November 29th, I’ll fly to Sydney, spending the next six weeks nomadding around Australia. 🙃 Then on January 15th, I’ll fly back to Arkansas.

Oh! Brief layover in Papeete, Tahiti. Not sure it’ll be long enough to leave the airport on an international flight (I think it’s a 2-2 1/2 hour layover). But if it is, I might sneak over to the beach to watch the morning sun climb in the sky (it’ll be early early morning). Have to at least set foot outside the airport on Tahitian soil. 🙃

So… I just booked a two-month vacation. 😶

Gulp.

I do have 24 hours to cancel it with a full refund, so if I come to some senses that I’m not currently… sensing… then maybe I’ll undo what I just did, but I got the plane tickets for sub $1800, which is pretty awesome, in my book–especially leaving from freaking XNA. That’s just… fabulous.

So… I’ve got some planning to do, some networking in the big NZ and Australia to do (might try couchsurfing.com again. I used that in Israel, and it was great!

So… it’s after 3:30 a.m., and I’d best be plopping myself in bed. Gonna be an absolutely nutty day tomorrow with cars. Very busy.

Well, my lovelies. After the cursed day of 8/10, this beginning to 8/11 is… promising? At least it’s a bit exciting (as well as nerve racking) to think about my upcoming trip. Hoping to find someone who wants to join me. Chase might be interested. We’ll see.

1. I’m grateful that the airfare deal was still there, at least in the long-term deal to Australia.
2. I’m grateful that the two jobs we did right after the nightmare Infiniti were quick, easy ones. I didn’t make much because of the big discounts, but, whatever.
3. I’m grateful that I didn’t have run the whole mile and a halfish back to my van, that they gave me a ride most of the way back.
4. I’m grateful that I can sleep now. 🙃
5. I’m grateful Malaki is learning and wants to take his time to do a good job. That’s… priceless.

Love to all.

Lift the World

~ stephen