I got to work on the car a little bit over the weekend. It was a profoundly refreshing experience. I changed the oil in the Volvo, something I’d put off for a month or so, and took the opportunity to rinse the salt off the outside and to clean out the idle speed control valve, in hopes of curing a loping idle problem that manifested itself when the car was warming up. The problem is fixed and the car runs very well indeed. I told Diane that I got a double sense of satisfaction–first from completing the job properly and second from experiencing the intuitive, sturdy and thoughtful construction of the car itself. Everything was easy to access, used familiar fasteners and came apart smoothly. I won’t use my experience with various makes of cars to comprehensively rate ease of maintenance between them, but suffice it to say that most European and Japanese makes place in the upper half of the rankings, and my endeavors with the Volvo bolstered that slant.<\/p>\n
It makes me itch for more tinkering, and listening to the Car Talk podcast at work this morning (as I do most Mondays) doesn’t help. I want to do so many different things, and among the many is vision of a small corner repair shop, specializing in two or three makes, and how much fun it would be to own it and live that life, rearranging talents engaged in hobbies and professions to bring the former to bear in an occupation. There would be aggravations, sure, but I think a lot of those could be avoided by keeping the scope of ambition small and being selective as one could be about a customer base without alienating folks. I love to work with my hands in that manner. Not only that, but there’s something fundamentally unpretentious about that kind of quasi-blue collar work that’s very appealing. We’ll see what God has in store.<\/p>\n