(written on the 7th from nose taken previously)
Not much happened today, but what did happen has… consequences… 😅 Hopefully some good ones, and definitely some… unfortunate ones. 😬
Darn my inability to leave things be. 😅
But we’ll get there.
[sigh]
After getting up and looking out at the beautiful ocean view, I spent a good little while chatting with a local named Errol (named after the actor from the 30s 😊) who’d recently retired and was out camping for the holiday weekend.
He was wearing a shorty and had just come back from a swim in the beautiful ocean.
We talked and talked (I think mostly about his life and stories in New Zealand) as we watched one lady shore fishing and a couple of other ladies braving the ocean cold without a wetsuit.
Good chat. I don’t think I’ve ever met an Errol before. 🙃
Somewhere around 10:45, we parted ways, and I began journal driving toward Hastings, trying to take a scenic coastal road at first, but running into private property.
I’ve needed to change my oil for a little while now, but I’d been waiting for a decent spot on a dirt road where I could drive up a little embankment with my left tires, so as to have all the oil congregating at the drain plug.
And I think I’ve also regularly simply forgotten. 🙃
But when I pulled into a random, mostly empty, parking lot, which just so happened to have a SuperCheap Auto parts in it (I figured I could get rid of my used oil immediately after changing it!), made the daring decision to park in a parking spot where my left tires were up on the curb.
I pretty much always spill, and a fair bit when I’m doing oil changes without an oil pan. 😅
That’s why I described it as a daring decision. 🙃
My “oil pans” were three empty ice cream containers, and I would need all three because more oil was going to come out then would fit two and still be able to slide them out from underneath the van without spilling them.
So I got myself a trash bag out of the back of the van, laid it down on the blacktop, set my first “oil pan” on the ground, and began.
With an oil container that holds two liters, and engine holding 4.3, I had to plug up the oil mid stream, getting oil all over my hand.
But none on a blacktop yet. 😎
The second oil container got almost all of the last of the oil inside the engine itself, so there was no need to try to stop it mid stream again. 🙏
Gratefully, and perhaps somewhat miraculously, given that I generally significantly over tighten oil filters, I was able to unscrew the oil filter without any tools.
🥳
Taking off the oil filter that was already on the car when I bought it required jamming the screwdriver through the oil filter in order to be able to twist it. 😆
I had expected to have to do the same, and I was pleasantly surprised when that was unnecessary. 🙏
I used the third ice cream container to get the oil from the oil filter, and then I used it to drain the last perhaps tablespoon out of the oil pan (I had reinstalled the plug while removing the oil filter, so I didn’t have the last drips from the oil pan dripping directly on my garbage bag).
Each time I filled an ice cream container, I put the lid on it and slid it out, putting it on the dirt on the other side of the curb.
I didn’t spill on the blacktop! Oh, I think an oily finger grazed the blacktop in one spot and left the tiniest little smear, but I managed to do the whole oil change and to keep the parking lot beautiful. 🥳
I did spill some oil on the dirt, however, when trans preferring the oil from the ice cream containers into the newly empty oil jug. 😅
But better on the dirt on the black top, yes?
Once I got everything cleaned up, as well as gathering trash out of the landscaping vegetation, I headed over to the auto parts store to recycle the oil, only to find that it was closed.
Come to think of it, every business in that strip mall was closed except for the pharmacy. 🤔
It was Good Friday… Were businesses actually closed on Good Friday?
I asked a local lady who had just parked and looked like she was getting ready to head into the pharmacy, and she confirmed that everything was closed for the holiday.
Apparently, it’s a lot in New Zealand that all businesses, other than those considered essential services, are required to close for Good Friday and face fines if they are caught “trading” during the holiday.
😶
Though I appreciate the sentiment to honor the holiday, I think freedom should take precedence.
But I don’t know the circumstances nor the history, nor the reasoning, nor anything behind it, so my above statement is more a statement of principle than of direct application here, as I simply don’t know enough to confidently critique the law.
Gratefully, petrol stations are considered essential services, so I was able to get gas. Oddly, grocery stores are not considered essential services 😶, so there was no stopping by to top up my food stores.
I had hoped to dispose of my oil, stop by the grocery store, and then go over to the nearby office supply store to see if I could have a sign made directing people to drain the hot spring tubs upon leaving.
You probably remember, but in case not, a few months ago, I had enjoyed some time up in Kaweka Forest Park, where on a particular day I had spent something like 8 or 10 hours cleaning the thick algae out of a couple of hot spring hot tubs.
The algae only grew where the water was (of course), so it would make maintenance of the hot tubs significantly easier to leave the hot tubs draining in between uses.
That way, the tubs could remain much more desirable. It’s a little bit of a turn off to show up at a hot tub dark green from thick algae growing. 🙃
Keeping the hot spring water flowing is also medically safer. Hot springs water can carry brain eating amoebas, but constantly flowing water doesn’t give them an opportunity to settle in the sediments at the bottom where their food is.
Unfortunately, with all the stores closed, I couldn’t accomplish that goal. So I chose to head toward the hills where the hot springs are, stopping off at park that doubled as a freedom-camping location.
I started spending a good little bit of time cleaning out my van. I need to take pictures and get it listed for sale ASAP.
But then I did something that… had fairly significant negative consequences.
[sigh]
You know that rust spot on my roof that I’ve mentioned before, the really big spot that’s all bubbled up?
Come to think of it, I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a picture of it. 😬
Well, there’s no taking a picture of it anymore.
In contemplating selling my van, I wanted to know exactly what I was selling, know the extent of the issues for the prospective buyers.
So… I started poking at the rust…
And the poke went all the way through.
I wasn’t… surprised. The bubbled up portion was so big that it was sort of expected, but… the consequences of doing what I had just done… those… are not small.
I might have to sell this thing for parts. 😅
I tried to convince myself that if I had to give this away at the end of my trip, that it would be fine, but now faced with the possibility of losing nearly everything I spent on it, which was already far more than I should have spent on it, I wasn’t able to maintain that hoped-for perspective. 😅
And I made a mess of the roof, using pliers to pull and peel away the rusted metal. There was a gaping hole. I didn’t have a magnet, so I had to rely on the lightly magnetized tip of my flathead screwdriver to fish all the magnetic dust and rusty flakes out of the crevices that it got into as I tore apart my roof. 😬
What a mess. 😕
What on earth was I thinking. I could have explained the rust issue without going and poking it.
😒
Now I’m going to end up spending a whole boatload of time trying to come up with some way to resolve this.
😕
I did the only thing that I could do for now, covering the gaping hole in my roof with tape, before drowning my sorrows in front of my phone screen and crashing for the night.
I can just hear Keanu Reeves saying it:
“Consequences.”
[sigh]
Lift the world.
Bring it… on? 😅
~ stephen
Lift the World 