An incredibly bad start to a day
Category Life
E, my 5th grade daughter, and I have had a standing Friday morning breakfast 'date' during the school year ever since her first month of 1st grade...today was the last date for her 5th grade year. It is a great time to get caught up with each other and spend some much needed quality time together. As always, the breakfast and company/companionship was good this morning...but the rest of the morning was horrible.
My aging GMC Jimmy SUV (1999 with 205,000 miles) has an ongoing problem with its driver side door hinge pins...they wear and fall out frequently. It happened this morning as I was closing the door to leave for our breakfast. Only the upper pin fell out and the door sort of hung on, slightly. The problem was the door is heavy and the bottom hinge will get 'tweaked' and bend. I realized that this was happening, so I quickly moved to close the door. I must be some sort of direct descendant of freakish gorillas that have instantaneous strength in stressful situations because I yanked the door so hard that the door panel separated from the door, breaking all of those single direction panel attachers clean off.
The hinge pin is a frequent problem like I said, so I thought that I could at least get the pin back in place and support the door properly, and then E and I would head off to breakfast...I needed to get away from the problem to calm down and the Friday morning 'date' was a great way to do that.
So I held the door on my shoulder and tried to get the pin back in place. And I was successful!
Unfortunately, the pin was not the only problem. Not only was there enough force to break the door panel free, I also materially broke the latching mechanism some how in the same process.
I shut off the truck and told E that we would take Mommy's car...and we did.
After dropping E off at school I returned to survey the damage. Sure enough the latch was completely unusable and the bottom hinge bent severely and I didn't have a way to get to work...so I headed upstairs and woke up S and Z, and told S that I needed a ride to the office. As she got ready I realized that I had gotten grease on my shirt and figured I should change. So standing in the middle of our bedroom, the same bedroom I have slept in for the past 10 years, I started to take off my shirt and promptly stuck my hand into the turning ceiling fan immediately over my head.
It has been one of those mornings.
E, my 5th grade daughter, and I have had a standing Friday morning breakfast 'date' during the school year ever since her first month of 1st grade...today was the last date for her 5th grade year. It is a great time to get caught up with each other and spend some much needed quality time together. As always, the breakfast and company/companionship was good this morning...but the rest of the morning was horrible.
My aging GMC Jimmy SUV (1999 with 205,000 miles) has an ongoing problem with its driver side door hinge pins...they wear and fall out frequently. It happened this morning as I was closing the door to leave for our breakfast. Only the upper pin fell out and the door sort of hung on, slightly. The problem was the door is heavy and the bottom hinge will get 'tweaked' and bend. I realized that this was happening, so I quickly moved to close the door. I must be some sort of direct descendant of freakish gorillas that have instantaneous strength in stressful situations because I yanked the door so hard that the door panel separated from the door, breaking all of those single direction panel attachers clean off.
The hinge pin is a frequent problem like I said, so I thought that I could at least get the pin back in place and support the door properly, and then E and I would head off to breakfast...I needed to get away from the problem to calm down and the Friday morning 'date' was a great way to do that.
So I held the door on my shoulder and tried to get the pin back in place. And I was successful!
Unfortunately, the pin was not the only problem. Not only was there enough force to break the door panel free, I also materially broke the latching mechanism some how in the same process.
I shut off the truck and told E that we would take Mommy's car...and we did.
After dropping E off at school I returned to survey the damage. Sure enough the latch was completely unusable and the bottom hinge bent severely and I didn't have a way to get to work...so I headed upstairs and woke up S and Z, and told S that I needed a ride to the office. As she got ready I realized that I had gotten grease on my shirt and figured I should change. So standing in the middle of our bedroom, the same bedroom I have slept in for the past 10 years, I started to take off my shirt and promptly stuck my hand into the turning ceiling fan immediately over my head.
It has been one of those mornings.
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Posted by Kevin Pettitt at 01:41:46 PM on 06/01/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Chris Blatnick at 03:06:00 PM on 06/01/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by KTfromLV at 05:06:01 PM on 06/01/2007 | - Website - |
Might be time for a hybrid to replace that doorless Jimmy - or the Costco industrial pack of bungee cords. I don't think duct tape is gonna cut it.
Posted by Jaq at 11:11:48 AM on 06/04/2007 | - Website - |
Regardless, my Jimmy's door has been repaired by yours truly. A slight $122 investment in a new latching mechanism (power everyhing has its downfalls) and about an hour of work and everything is ship shape and ready to roll.
It would be an interesting study to determine the whole energy cost of building a new car -vs- maintaining an existing car. A friend of mine was doing his doctoral paper on energy externalities but got sidetracked and was working in the vice president's office (Gore) for a while and I lost track of him...maybe I should look him up?
My hand is much better now as well, as is my attitude!
Posted by Andy at 11:24:51 AM on 06/04/2007 | - Website - |