1/3/08

As promised, here are a few more stories from the “vacation.” I mentioned taking a shower in mom’s bathroom. The reason I had to do that a few times over the last few weeks was the fact that my bathroom was in a state of disrepair, remember? First off, mom’s shower sucks. The sprayer shoots off in wild directions, and the tiles leak if you spray it in the wrong area. Basically, it is a real pain in the ass to shower in there. Some days I was just stinky because I didn’t want to deal with it. Having said all that, that is not the reason why taking a shower in mom’s bathroom is such an ordeal. No, the main reason why I hate taking a shower in mom’s bathroom is the mirror. When Juan gets out of the shower, he is assaulted by the vision of himself nekkid. No one should have to see that! It was almost enough to make me want to eat better and get some exercise. Almost. I think when the place is mine I'll rig up some curtains to close over the mirror so I can shower in peace. Ugh, it gives me the heebiest of jeebies just thinking about it. Ok, so that story probably could have been left out of the narrative, but there it is anyway. Moving on, my cousin Russ was in town for Christmas. When Aunt Margaret told my mom that he was going to be renting a car, she volunteered one of my vehicles for him to drive around. I said, “Sure, Fifi’s keys are on the wall by the door.” Mom followed me out to Aunt Margaret’s to drop it off one morning while Mario was getting ready to work on one of the bathrooms. That branch of the family tree was at the Christmas Eve service and wanted to return it to me not knowing I had no way of driving both cars home. They volunteered to drop it at the house on their way home. Now, if you will remember, mom was going to Not Texas for Christmas Eve dinner with my sister and her step daughter. That left me on my own for dinner. I drove down Camp Bowie and Hwy 80 musing over what I wanted to eat. I had decided that I wanted bait but wasn’t sure if they’d be open. When I got there and they were, however, I decided against it because I had gifts in the front seat I didn’t want to leave unattended. I took off to find something else. All of the drive-through places which were open on the first pass had closed by the time I went back. I swung through Captain D’s and sat at the ordering speaker for a few moments. When it became obvious they weren’t going to talk to me, I drove on. As my options became more and more limited, I finally decided to go ahead and risk leaving the car unattended in a parking lot. I pulled into the Tokyo Steakhouse parking lot and threw my coat over the gifts. I went in and was surprised to see how many people were at the various cooking tables. I was led to the sushi bar and sat next to a little old Japanese lady. Well, she was two or three chairs over but since we were the only ones at the bar we were essentially right next to each other. I filled out the little ordering menu thingy and turned it in. He looked at it and apologized for not having but one serving of white tuna. I said yellow tail would be fine. He made some gesture toward the Japanese lady like, “Don’t tell her I ran out!” She saw him and turned to me with a quizzical look. “Oh no!” I said. “I'm not going to get him in trouble!” thinking she was the owner, or his boss, or his mom, or something. She replied, in much better English than the chef much to my surprise, “Why would he be in trouble?” I still refused to say and he ‘fessed up saying, “We closed tomorrow. I no make more than I need for today.” She smiled and acknowledged the logic there. So, I guess what I'm saying here is I'm guilty of “racial profiling” and stereotyping people based on their appearance and location. But hey, if it looks like a duck and is in a duck pond, Juan wouldn’t expect it to break out in a Shakespearian soliloquy would he? No, he’d expect it to quack. I expected her to speak broken English because of how she was being treated by the staff, with reverence and respect, like an elder of the village might be treated. That’s all I'm saying. Ok, so I ate my bait and had a really good time by myself, as usual. I went home and, well, you read about that yesterday. Ok, so here’s the Toyota story. Like I said, John and I went to Not Texas to pick it up. We got to the place and I parked across the street rather than attempting to back into the lot. John dealt with the dude and got the paperwork in order. He decided he’d give backing the trailer in a shot so I tossed him the keys. He backed it up in one shot from across the street, around the corner of the building, and to the back where the car was parked. We loaded it up and strapped it down then took off for Texas. We ate a quick lunch at Cheddar’s and rolled to the shop. We stopped at Steve’s Foreign Auto where John bought a 32/36 and an adapter plate. He brought the stock carburetor in to compare it to the adapter. The bolt holes lined up but the main hole for where the adapter mated to the manifold didn’t. It was close but just off to the side a bit. I kept saying to look at the gasket because it did line up and finally we realized the adapter would line up once it was right side up on the manifold. He bought it all and headed out again. After parking the trailer, we milled around looking at stuff for a bit. I decided to fire up Mr. Wiggly since he hadn’t been run in a week or two. Once I heard the engine going I decided I had to drive it home. John parked Fifi in the spot vacated by Mr. Wiggly and we locked up the shop. I really like that stupid, uncomfortable, hard to drive, gas guzzling, noisy, stinky, ugly old van! I mentioned Mario laying tile that afternoon, well we took Mr. Wiggly to Sutherland’s to buy some more supplies and both laughed the whole way there and back. You just can’t help it in that thing. Of course my brother wasn’t as impressed with Mr. Wiggly and commented that he felt much safer in Fifi once we dropped off Mr. Wiggly the next day. There’s no accounting for taste I guess. I'm still in the middle of the Toyota story, aren’t I? Ok, so New Year’s Day John and I meet back at the shop to work on the Toyota. When I told him about Fifi’s clutch he asked, “How are we going to move the trailer and get the car off?” I said, “Mr. Wiggly.” He got to work on the car while it sat on the trailer mainly because there isn't a place to park it once we take it off so it might as well stay there for now. He began stripping superfluous bits off and got the intake manifold tidied up. We decided to ditch the carburetor heater thing and needed shorter studs and/or bolts for the adapter. We found them and he bolted it up. We messed with the linkage for a while and finally I zooked a cable wheel to the Weber linkage and he bolted it all together. We had idle to WFO with the pedal but he needed a return spring. I stole one off of an ICT carburetor inside and he installed it. He also bent the cable bracket a bit which turned out to be our undoing. I made a PCV hose and installed a nipple in the manifold for it. He plumbed the fuel line and grabbed the battery. With it all hooked up he gave the key a turn. It fired up and settled into a very high idle. I messed with the fast idle adjustment but it didn’t help. We opened the air filter and saw that the choke was fully open so it had to be the main idle. I could force it down some but it turns out the cable was just that little bit too taut. We shut it down and decided to call it a day with that. We’ll have another look at it Saturday. Well, I think I've said enough for today. Perhaps I'll have more tomorrow. We’ll see.