Friday, March 19, 2021

Car Failure and Fence Opportunity

Friday morning the windshield wipers would not go.
The motor turned, the wipers did not.
They were not stuck to anything - they moved freely when I tried them - but nothing I could do would get the blades to go.

I speculate that we had a slight freeze a few days back, and perhaps without thinking I tried to use the wipers before I scraped the frost; maybe that was the last straw for the 20-year-old bushings. But who knows?

I foolishly thought that there was only a light sprinkle and I would be ok, but it soon turned out that driving in even a light sprinkle is dangerous without wipers, because streetlights and oncoming traffic is blinding when droplets scatter their light. I went back without shame - and probably not early enough - texted the ladies I could not come, and dropped the car off at Meinecke's when it opened.

I posted in FB that I could not do the food run and fortunately someone filled in for me.

Once again I did the calculation: is it worth keeping this car running? Should I rely on taxis or get something new? But so far it feels worthwhile to put in one or two repairs a year. Who knows?

I placed the first few stones in the new raised bed. Lacking transportation, I did not buy a backing board as planned, but I left space for it, using a piece of treated lumber from the wood pile. These concrete chunks a quite non-uniform so it'll take a while to place them, but the big problem today was that my knees didn't really like carrying something heavy. I suppose this is related to the issue with them that I discovered doing squats - I used to be able to get away with sloppy form but now my knees just refuse. Time to listen I suppose.

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