This event shouldn't have been a complete surprise. Even I, blessed as I am with eternal optimism, had been unable to ignore the fact that my car was noisier than usual. Adding to that, Lori had been nice enough to point out that their were small puddles under my car. I just prayed that it would make it through the week so I could fix it on my own time. That wasn't to be.
So, what was I to do? When I was in Navy Nuclear training, the instructors used to always compare various components to their equivalents in cars. This seemed to work well for the gear-heads, but I was not one of them. I found myself doing the exact opposite as I tried to interpret what I was seeing as a function of a reactor. My coolant temperature was clearly going up. Since my engine is not capable of super criticality, I could rule that out. I pulled over and didn't see anything obvious that could be blocking air flow across my radiator and in the time that it took for me to inspect it, the temperature came down off the peg a bit. I only had a couple miles to go until I reached a gas station and I decided to try for it. I had come dressed for work which normally involves thin layers that I could shed as I heated up from raking. This would probably not work too well during a two mile walk in this temperature.
As I got back on the highway with my hazards on and daring only a meager forty miles an hour, I saw a sign that I once again recognized from my training. My temperature gauge dropped immediately from pegged high (It had quickly worked its way back up) to pegged low. This was an indication of a catastrophic coolant rupture. In my past life this would have initiated a reactor SCRAM, a shutting of the main steam stops, isolation of the affected coolant loop, and other tasks that I probably shouldn't elaborate on here. None of these really applied, except for "SCRAM-ing" or turning off my car to minimize the addition of heat (The term "SCRAM" allegedly is an acronym for "Super Critical Reactor Axe Man" from the days when reactor control rods were lifted by ropes and the cutting of the ropes would drive it sub-critical).
Navy legend had it that the Captain had a book that contained the real operating limits for tactical situations - limits that exceeded the normal operating ones for the boat. With one mile to go, I ad-libbed the operating limits for my car and kept on going with nothing but the air blowing across my engine to cool it. Without coolant, my heater was no longer working so I was feeling pretty darn cool myself.
I made it to the gas station without my car dying, but the coolant rupture was quickly confirmed when I tried to add some via the overflow reservoir. It all promptly came out the bottom. For the record, the woman working the graveyard shift at the Chevron at the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Skyway in Chico was very kind and as supportive as she could have been. The same could be said for Ed at Chuck Patterson Toyota (who worked with the warranty folks to get my repairs covered and actually kept me updated on how things were progressing. In my "cough-cough" thirty nine years on this earth this was the first time that I left a car dealership not feeling violated and I would strongly recommend them.
My lessons learned from this early morning adventure were:
- Some goals may be admirable yet ultimately unattainable.
- There still are decent people in the world, although they don't get the press coverage that they deserve.
- A little kindness and understanding brings out the best in people.
- If I want to keep any of my residual dignity, I should probably at least pretend to care about these types of obvious signs, especially if my wife has noticed them. As it is, the "told-ya-sos" are kinda scathing ;)
