November 10, 2004

• and the story continues…

  After I posted the pic of Doug shoveling my car out, and sniveled about
  my being “no help at all,” I couldn’t stand it.  I fortified
  myself with a few hits of the bronchodilators because I was out of
  breath, then got into gloves, jacket and hat, and went out to do some
  light work.

  I brushed off the bits of snow he’d missed on the car as he shoveled
  the mass of it off.  I scraped all my windows and removed the
  packed stuff from around the windshield wipers and in the little recess
  with the broken latch on the cover, where the gas filler cap is. 
  Then I got a shovel and started getting it from under the edges of the
  car and around the wheels, while Doug worked on the berm the snowplow
  had left behind the car.

  That was the full width of our two-car driveway, six or seven feet
  across and two feet deep, hard packed heavy wet and dirty snow mixed
  with gravel.  He cleared enough of it for me to get the car out,
  and will need to clear the rest of the width of the driveway before we
  will be able to get another load of firewood, or to accomodate
  Greyfox’s car if he comes up for a visit.

  I was digging packed snow away from my right front wheel, and said to
  Doug, “Either this tire is flat, or it’s buried six inches in the
  ice.”  Then I kicked the tire.  It gave, and gave off the
  soft thump of a flat.  Darn!  That tire keep going flat
  summer and winter.  I’d thought that having the snow tires put on
  would fix the flat, but the problem must be a flaw in the rim or a
  right-front gremlin (and not the AMC kind, ’cause Streak is a Subie).

  When Doug finished up as much of that berm as needed to be done to let
  me out of the driveway, and went inside, I was getting out the little
  compressor that plugs into the lighter socket.  I took off my
  right glove to unscrew the valve cover and get it securely into my
  pocket, then clamped the air hose onto the tire valve.  When I got
  the glove back on and switched on the compressor, its built-in pressure
  gauge immediately read 80 PSI.  “That’s not right!” I thought, and
  hit the off switch.

  I took off the left glove to let that hand get cold for a change,
  unclamped the air hose, peered at it querulously, clamped it back on,
  put the glove back on and turned the switch back on.  That time,
  the damned gauge read 0 — goose egg, no pressure at all.  Okay,
  left it running and crawled into the back seat and dug my pressure
  gauge out of the box of tools and shit back there.

  Meanwhile the little compressor is putting and puffing and dancing
  around on the snow, doing its thing.  I took off a glove again,
  don’t recall which one that time (both hands were cold, it didn’t
  matter), turned off the compressor, unclamped the hose and checked the
  pressure.  The tire had gained 20 PSI while the compressor bounced
  around with its built-in gauge reading zero. 

  Knowing that the job was about halfway done, I hooked it all back up
  again and turned it on.  Voila!  That time the built-in
  gauge’s needle came up to twenty, agreeing with my other gauge, and
  rose steadily and (I hope) trustworthily, until the job was done. 
  Then I disconnected everything, shut off the engine and came in. 
  Doug was loading the woodstove in preparation to going to bed.

  That’s the next thing I’m going to do, I think.  I’ve posted a past-life reading Greyfox did, and have written and
  posted a new FAQ on KaiOaty, not on why the future is not set in stone
  or on why some readings turn out better than others, but on Letting Go,
  something many of us still on the path to perfection need to know how
  to do.  It was a productive day.  Tired, hungry, thirsty, but
  happy.  G’nite.

  

  • 11:37 pm
  • 5 Comments