Wet weather is the worst

It wasn't the worst kind of weather we ever have . The worst kind is where the south west blows up from the Arctic and prevents you from doing anything outside;cuts straight through you We can get that sort of weather the day after drying northerlies have baked us to a crisp.Adaptable - that's what we breed here.
No it was a muggy day, a rare day in summer when the wind is from the east and  its drizzling all day . Not cold, but everyone seems to have a headache and you don't want to work or even think about it ; humidity near 100%.; a good time to watch the cricket.
A good day to be in the car with the window down . I spent one of those rare days visiting people out in the country . Everything is flowering, growing and green . Still it was a working day and I was the only one with a bit of time to spend .I fixed a few things and noted down a few to fix later.
As usual, I studied the resilience factor in different places and rejoiced that it was high in most but could only pray when I could see it was stretching some, including me .
The main reasons for the trip were friends i hadn't seen for a while .I had just found out a lonely farmer friend whom I had hoped to see in a retirement home had passed away some weeks earlier . Visiting his house ( 5 minutes away from the car) for some flowers, I heard the sound of a police siren but couldn't see the car ( the vegetation is thick) I was expecting to be charged with trespassing but was surprised to find the policeman concerned about the fact that I had left the keys in the car ( I must learn to always remove them) . He said he was about to charge me and lock up the car. While it was on a main road, there were no houses for miles around and a lonelier stretch of road I couldn't imagine .A hitch hiker might,  in the most rarest of occasions, have discovered his ticket to ride but I would have noticed him on the way there. In this weather he could have borrowed it,  I have plenty of cars and its by far the worst for maintenance .I identify with hitch hikers - I used to a lot of it when I made a point of using public transport and meeting people .  Thieves are choosy too I know from lots of direct experience- old cars aren't shiny enough to sell easily or showy enough to tempt hoons . This one they could have as far as i was concerned -- its a work car and worth absolutely nothing to anyone but me .

No one can be objective when you are grieving,  but I continued to tell him the story I thought about as I was walking back to the car; about how I was grieving for a friend who had just died and that I was looking for some flowers for his letterbox that I had just fixed up .( Notice his creative use of the letter four )
The policeman  said he wasn't interested in what I was doing on the property ,but he was concerned that the police were chasing too many stolen cars;" this car had the window down and was not locked "- it was also out in the middle of nowhere !. He pointed to what he thought was a computer on the passenger seat (actually a DVD player with home made recordings , I was going to loan to my friend)
I was sort of glad he wasn't concentrating too well because he might have noticed that the driver side  door couldn't be locked ( had no pull up pin or connections ) and the window couldn't easily be wound up ( apparently this feature features in planned obsolescence discussions amongst the manufacturers ) . The old Volvo is heading for its 30th birthday . He was about to lock it up and let me walk home, he said .
I wasn't about to stand there and take it,  so we talked about his discretion in all this.  He then asked to see my licence .  After he saw my licence he said he  had decided that I would get a charge in the mail. 3 figures I know . I can go to court and contest it but he's there and he's listening so how would someone else far removed respond?All time i didn't have

I was just about to drive off in front of him when I stopped the car and did some reading . Didn't want him to notice anything else that was not quite right with my old car ( like the rear lights which need constant attention - esp in wet weather a)
No one seemed interested in my day when I got home -After all, I don't always use the blinkers when turning and they sometimes switch off too early --- it was that kind of day !   Hope you are having a good one- a better one.


P

Who would ever have electric windows?

Note the gear wear on the window winder -
Still can't afford a new door handle . Even though its the main door the replacement handle would be over $200. The one above works fine and you don't feel like your stressing the metal like you can do on the planned obsolence ones ! In the country we can make a piece of wire do just about anything .Not exactly fashion cool but no one notices unless you cross the street to look - the car has silver mags

As for the electric window which became jammed when these broken handles fell back into the door frame -those electric windows are a pain in both winter and summer .


The broken door handle locked/prevented the window going up the last inch or so .Took me a while to realise it wasn't the tired old motor that was giving up near the top of the window frame .
Like women,some say, once you've got electric windows  you can't live with em and when they don't work you can't live without them . Even relatively new cars find they get slow and unreliable  and no amount of lubricant will help revive their climb to the top .
Like trailer lights , the onset of the wet increases the power losses due to dirt liberated voltage : the motors  lose power .
Wet winters have finally returned,  and even though the final gap when I parked was only a few inches,  the southerly at the school meant I had to stuff a giant plastic bag in the gap to keep the seat from getting totally wet within seconds.
On the way home,  the gap meant fresh air, ( must fix the exhaust)  but I made the mistake of pressing the switch the wrong way to try and close it again ( 14volts during running time sometimes seems to inspire the motor ) . The window went down enough to make driving in the heavy rain impossible,  so I had to stop and swap the switches on the dash to get the dsah thing up again ( the contacts inside the switches works sometimes and not others.) Hope you had a better day - the rain has been great otherwise.

We noticed during a highway collection that electric window winders don't work on even many modern cars. Poeple would open the door and pass money through the gap ( no joke) . Electric windows - just another example of planned obsolescence with the grand frustration to boot ?


The top gear trio need new top gear cars because they can't fix em . We have old top gear cars that well, deserve a little attention .