Yesterday I worked on my friend’s car. We were worried that it had a blown head gasket, but after talking to a guy at work, he suggested that I replace the oil regulation sensor first, and flush out the oil and radiator fluid.
I got home from work and got changed so I could work on the car. My head was still spinning from the work day, and I wasn’t paying full attention to what I was doing. I dropped the new part, and it managed to fall into the car’s elaborate air intake system, and I ended up spending two hours taking off the wheel, front bumper and many nuts and bolts to take the blasted thing apart to get back the part that I needed. After many swear words and shakes of my head at my clumsiness, I retrieved the part, and set to work bolting it on, to replace the broken one. After I replaced the module, I drained the oil, replaced the oil filter, and then flushed out the radiator, which had become a brown mess from the leaked oil. After filling the radiator with fresh coolant, and the engine with new oil, I double checked to make sure everything was fastened down where it should be. I lowered the car back off the jacks, and fired the old girl up. To my relief there were no leaks and the new part seemed to be holding on just fine. I texted my friend to let him know that the car was fixed, and he was ecstatic to find out that I had saved him a fortune on repair bills.
To pay me for the work I did, I said he just owed me dinner. I was starving after a full day of work, and my wife had been home for a couple hours already, waiting for me to get done. So I took a shower and we headed over to the place that my friend works and we had dinner. Those pork chops and mashed potatoes never tasted so good, especially washed down with a good beer. Brooke enjoyed her meal also, and found the cocktail to be the she had ever tasted.
All in all, it was a busy but productive day, and everyone was happy. Even though I had clumsily dropped the part, I kept my cool and eventually retrieved it. I saved my friend a great deal of money by doing the work for him, and I got a good meal out of it. All is well that ends well. Sometimes you just have to get down and dirty and do a little maintenance and repairs. And afterwards, through the hard work and the frustrations, everything turns out right as rain.
Becoming American 