The Misadventures of Woody
One of the drawbacks of being an only child is that when family issues and emergencies occur, there is no one to share the load with. If something happens and my parents need me, I will be there, end of story. On the upside, there will be absolutely no squabbling over inheritance when that sad day finally occurs.
Thus, I find myself on the coast doing my proud duty with a funeral on one side of the family and an ailing uncle in intensive care on the other. Today while mom attended death duty, I stayed by dad's side to be with him and help him do whatever it is he wants or needs done. Today for instance was a dentist day and tomorrow will be a two hour drive to take him to see his brother in the hospital.
Because of the dentist today, it could not be a travel day so we did some of the things he likes to do as a retired person, and I got to see for myself what I have to look forward to in my future days. As you can see below, he goes fishing daily. While he and his friend worked their lines, I looked up and out with the camera so I could show you home on the Newport River.
Later in the day, I borrowed a tool from a friend of his I needed to fix an oil leak on my car. The instructions said to tighten the bolts to 40 pounds. Without a tork wrench I snugged all the bolts to a uniform 20 pounds. Thus the leak. With borrowed tool in hand I fell in on evenly tightening the bolts one after the other 3/4 of a turn at a time. I was almost finished with my first pass around when *snap*...
When I finished cussing, we went to Sears to buy a tool which we would need to remove the broken steal bolt from the cast aluminum block. The block was actually cast in a Styrofoam mold so the aluminum bares the familiar Styrofoam look. See below.
You will note that in front of the timing gear on your left there is a bolt hole. This is the offending a...hole. Sorry, this is still all very fresh in my mind.
So since we would have to drive two hours to a Saturn dealership anyway to buy the very special bolt, we can't make the repair until we return from Wilmington tomorrow which we were going to do anyway to visit dad's ailing brother.
Then we picked a peck of yard fresh and ripe strawberries. No picture available, just imagine back pain. Strawberries smell like back pain.
