Today was the day I had resolved to take the Durango in for its 3,000 mile service. I have to decide these things in advance because, frankly, I don’t like this particular chore.<\/p>\n
It’s not that the guys at AvisLube aren’t friendly and competent — they are, and the whole process is set up to be as painless as possible, with Fox News showing on a widescreen TV, free coffee and soft drinks, and even a “business center” with free access to a computer and internet (but no wi-fi; what’s up with that<\/em>?). They’ve even got a glass-in playroom for the kidwinks, complete with TV tuned to cartoons, I suppose to give moms a break, although I never see anyone else in there except men.<\/p>\n It’s just…well, to be honest, I feel intimidated when I take my car in for any kind of service. There, I’ve said it.<\/p>\n Now, I did my own oil and filter changing for more years than most of the guys who work at AvisLube have been alive. In fact, it was only when word finally reach west Texas that dumping used motor oil into the alley behind your house was frowned upon by certain segments that I stopped, and that word got to our neck of the woods pretty late.<\/p>\n Oh, there for a while I still changed it myself and then took the used oil to a local station where it was probably accumulated with the other do-it-yourselfers’ offerings and then dumped into an alley somewhere besides behind my house, but that got to be a messy pain and I decided just to pay someone else to do it. All that’s to say that I know my way around an oil pan and filter wrench…but, really, that’s about it, and I get nervous around mechanics who have advanced beyond those basic skills — which is pretty much everyone else.<\/p>\n I got to the lube joint around 8:30, was greeted by a polite young man, and I immediately did the First Stupid Thing of the morning. [Making it to 8:30 is grounds for claiming a moral victory, by the way.]<\/p>\n Him: Good morning! Time for an oil and filter change?<\/em> (They look up your license plate in their computer as you pull in so they already know more about your car than you do before you open the door.)<\/p>\n Me: Yeah, and also, I’d like to go ahead and get an inspection sticker. I know I’m a little early but I don’t want to have to come back in next month…<\/em><\/p>\n Him [leaning over to peer at my windshield]: Uh…are you sure about that…?<\/em><\/p>\n Me: Oh, yeah. I don’t mind losing a month…<\/em><\/p>\n Him [pointing at the inspection sticker]: Well, you actually have seven<\/strong> months left on this one.<\/em><\/p>\n Me [reacting to the dawning realization of my FST]: Uh…well…I guess I was looking at the wrong sticker, wasn’t I? Heh. Never mind.<\/em><\/p>\n Him [in the tone that one takes when speaking to small children or SUV owners whose faculties are suspect]: Go right on inside, sir, and have a cup of coffee and we’ll take care of it. Still 35 pounds of air in the tires, right?<\/em><\/p>\n At that point he could have recommended filling my tires with weapons grade plutonium and I would have nodded in agreement. I went inside to wait for further self-inflicted indignities.<\/p>\n I don’t know how they do it where you are, but here it’s similar to sitting in a hospital waiting room, biding time until the doctor comes out to consult with you on the prognosis. In the case of AvisLube, this involves the technician bringing for your inspection at least two things: your car’s air filter, and a plastic card smeared with several splotches of fluid. You’re expected to study those items and provide him with instructions on how best to proceed.<\/p>\n Now, I wouldn’t expect a surgeon to bring out a newly-extracted spleen and consult with me on its condition; I’m not sure why these guys think I’m qualified to assess the condition of the various fluids leaking out of my eight year old Dodge. And it’s even worse if the schedule says that there are other things that have to be done, other more esoteric things, like refraculating the transaxillary impediment, or adjusting the capacitative diaphragm to original IEEE specifications.<\/p>\n So, generally, what I do is pretend to carefully inspect the offerings — for all I know, they have only one plastic card and it’s pre-fluidized each morning with a variety of flavored honey and the same card is shown to every customer — and slowly nod my head while intently searching the technician’s facial expression for some clue as to what the correct answer should be, all the while praying that the whole crew isn’t out in the work area, gathered around my car’s open hood and pointing and giggling about the primo dork who’s let a fine piece of machinery degenerate to such a sad state.<\/p>\n Fate was kind to me this morning, however, apparently feeling badly about springing such an embarrassing FST on me without a warm-up. The technician brought out the Plastic Card of Mysterious Fluids and the Durango’s floppy air filter, and said the words I always long to hear: “all your fluids look fine and you’re not due for any additional service.” YES!<\/p>\n However, there was still the matter of the air filter. Judging the appearance of an air filter is tricky, as you really don’t have a good baseline, or at least I can never remember it if I ever had one. Was it milky white when it was new, or was it more beigey? Darn my lazy ways…when would I ever learn to remove the filter each week, take a digital photo of it, and then study the progression of decay and dirtiness so I would be prepared for this inevitable test?<\/p>\n Or, I could just take the coward’s way out. When was the filter last changed?<\/em>, I asked. He looked at The File (they know everything, as we established above). About 30,000 miles ago<\/em>, he replied.<\/p>\n Taking command of the situation and reasserting my alpha-ness, I issued the order that would have brought the other men to their feet in applause had they not been off watching cartoons in the game room: Change it!<\/em><\/p>\n So, now I’m all set for another 3,000 miles. And, pretty soon now, I’ll go out into the garage and take a photo of my air filter.<\/p>\n Once I figure out how to open the hood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When mechanical ineptitude meets masculine bravado, something has to give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-plain-silly","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4209"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6970,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions\/6970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}