Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

My friend Robert finished his thesis defense on Monday, so a group of us went out to celebrate. We started out at an empty Habanos for pool, and played for an hour. Next we hit Dairy Queen, and I cashed in my “free small Blizzard” card on an Oreo fudge earthquake sundae. It wasn’t too sweet which surprised me in a good way; Blizzards sometimes give me a sugar headache. Then we drove up to Galaxy cinema to see the new movie “Iron Man” [8/10]. As I turned into the cursed parking lot, my power steering started to groan. Oh oh. I pulled into the closest parking stall available, right beside a CIBC (which I was going to head to later that night anyway — more good fortune) and popped the hood. There was a fluid leak all over the passenger side. In the growing darkness I couldn’t tell the colour, but it looked like orange coolant had sprayed onto the accessory belt, and I reasoned that it was due to the coolant work done last week at RMP. So we walked across the parking lot to the theatre, and enjoyed the very good movie.

Returning to the car a couple hours later though, there was a bit of a puddle under the car, and the power steering was not working. Getting a better look at the fluid, I saw that it was more like oil, and realized it wasn’t coolant, and a power steering fluid leak had started (finishing my car off). So I phoned CAA and the tow truck arrived within half an hour as promised. It was now after midnight though, and we thought we’d call a cab from Brewsters but they were locking up, and so were all of the other places within sight.

We saw a city bus, one that would go right by my place as luck would have it! Except it was the last bus of the night, and wasn’t going the other direction! Darn, eh?

Walking across the street to a pay phone to get a number of a cab company turned out to be in vain as well. The Yellow Pages where “Taxi” was, had half of the page ripped out! The only number completely intact was for “Premiere” which sounded expensive, and besides they were the company with the driver that tried to intimidate friends of mine in the UofR strike in November. I then remembered I had a number for Capital Cabs in my wallet (from a job last year with the Gov’t that used them) and gave them a call. The cab took almost 30 minutes to arrive, and we killed time talking at a bus stop beside a different Dairy Queen. As model citizens, we didn’t pee in the bushes of the Dairy Queen. I just thought I’d mention that.

So to recap:
Bike front wheel: stolen
Car coolant: repaired at $1150 + damage to power steering???
Car steering: disabled + $untold cost EDIT: fixed for $147 power steering line with hole from belt rubbing + $16 cab ride

Vehicles suck.

UPDATE: RMP refunded me both the repair that Capital did, and my $16 cab ride. Thank goodness finally something went right.

I have to dig up more information about this faulty part, or else I’m on the hook for a $1000+ repair job. Seems GM settled a lawsuit without admitting fault, recently as March in the USA. Small claims court here I come? They only want to do the repair if it’s under 5 years or under 100,000Km. I’m at 9yr and 200K. Shouldn’t matter much, I maintained the coolant, and this part would have died from the fault anyway!

Gosh darn it!
“Chrysler, Ford, and GM, engine head/intake manifold gaskets—Too many service bulletins in the book to count, plus some important court cases that nailed Ford’s hide to the wall. Symptoms: overheating, windows fog up, and poor gas mileage”

I took my car to a GM dealer in Yorkton years ago for service, and mentioned my windshield fogs up easily. I wonder if it was related. They sure as heck knew there was a risk with this gasket, and never mentioned it to me.

Might be worth searching this page for your vehicle too.

Excuse me while I go blow a gasket.

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UPDATE:
Phoned GM back on Friday, and they are talking with the dealership on Monday morning where I’m having the repairs made. I found the receipt on the weekend that shows I had the coolant system flushed in 2006 like the scheduled maintenance in the manual recommended. Of course, GM didn’t mention at that time that the gasket I had was likely to fail prematurely, or that the dexcool could end up causing rusty sludge.

The Wheels really fell off for the Conservative Party of Canada on the weekend. It’s their own doing to. Journalists don’t make things like this up (they aren’t writing for Air Farce after all):

“Instead [the Conservatives] scurried for a nearby exit and beat a hasty retreat down the fire stairs.”

I was listening to Monty Python Sunday evening, and I think they would have had a hard time coming up with the kind of humour in that public/media relations fiasco. Why not also garnish their heads, and jump into crocodile mouths while they’re busy being eaten alive?

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This will be the talk of the town for a while yet, unless something even worse happens (and it’s possible there will be fines or arrests over the election scandal, if not Cadscam).

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Driving back from Winnipeg, the roads were terrible coming into Regina. Freezing rain coated the highway, and windshield, making visibility and traction things of the past. It was perfect all the way to the border though.

It was a beautiful day. I gave a ride to Byron from Brandon to Winnipeg, and filled up with $1.189/L gas outside of Portage’. I even used the A/C. Victoria, B.C. I hear, wasn’t as snow-free.

-Aylesbury at sunset

Check out why Chamberlain isn’t twinned. The railroad is on one side of the town, and a huge river valley on the other. There’s no way to work around it. Keep the highway at 50km/h and make it a change of pace for the weary highway driver on a nearly 3 hour drive between the two major cities of Saskatchewan.

- Sturdy Stone Center

- This truck’s driver gave me a look because I had both hands with camera out of the sunroof, on a right-hand drive car. Good for a double take anyway.

- Huffb1, Artemis, Saskboy, and Jadon starting at front left and working clockwise.

-The XO in front of a Park Cafe photograph on the wall

I had another close call with a four legged Bambi today. After noticing a loner antelope on the way into Saskatoon the other day, it made no attempt to cross the highway in front of my car; it was never a danger. But coming home in the dark tonight from Saskatoon, I had a close encounter, of the four legged kind. I saw a flash of fast moving fur hurtling into the ditch from a field, on a collision course with my car, and another car was quickly coming up behind me to pass. Fortunately it was a divided highway, and the car behind me didn’t smack into me from behind when I braked sharply, as I laid on the horn. The deer threw on its brakes too, it’s legs looking almost parallel to the ground at the mid-point of the ditch, and it avoided the looming fight with my fender as it took off in the opposite direction.

It can be very important to avoid collisions with animals.

That was the end of my excitement (and hopefully the deer’s too) for the ride home. I had a new Bon Jovi CD to listen to, and got part way through, because the new Saskatoon radio stations were interesting to listen to. Rawlco has a new one called Wired (I think) and Hot 93 is now The Bull 92.9. Rock 102 was surprisingly good while I was there as well, and there was an oldies station, and 95.1 too. I never even bothered with the AM stations.

I finished watching “Splash” [5/10] the other night, and wasn’t too impressed. It had a very weak ending. And a weak middle.

-Chamberlain’s church for sale

Today was a good way of spending a day. For lunch I ate with my cousin, and Huffb1, Jadon, and Dani at the Park Cafe for a little SaskBlogs party.
The afternoon disappeared, and I went to supper at Passage to India (very fast service, and great food).

After supper my friend and I saw “Smart People” [8/10] at the Galaxy. It had a lot of intelligent humour, sort of rare for a Hollywood movie. After going home for the night I watched “Vacation” [8/10] with Chevy Chase. And now I’m part way into “Splash” [5/10] which I’ve also seen before, but not for decades.

Having an XO laptop might change the way I blog. I’ve “live blogged” twice today. Maybe it just seems that with a wireless laptop you can blog even while things are happening away from your “main” blogging station.

Huffb1 and Saskboy are organizing a short-notice gathering for bloggers on Saturday April 12th in Saskatoon. We meet at 12:00PM at the Park Cafe on 515 20th St. W. near Ave. E S.

Stay tuned for any further details before Saturday…