Now it occurs to me that the oil still isn’t changed in that vehicle, and I’ve already installed a new oil filter. Oil level is too high. I should drain off some of it even though the old yucky stuff is now well mixed with the new stuff and probably cramming the new filter full of old glock. Oh well, if it’s not one thing it’s another.

What does this picture have to do with the BGF? Oh, nothing. It’s just that I had it on my flash drive, and today it caught my eye. I’m pretty tired this afternoon.

This is Harrison Lake from my campsite taken a couple of summers ago. The peak, which I drew, is off to the left. But I think it’s pretty neat the way the land drops off just at the edge of the lake like this. Maybe I’ll have to make this into a drawing sometime. It’ll have to wait until I have time to do it, and money to scan, frame, and ship it out. But if you like the idea, let me know.

Ingrediments for windshield washer fluid

Actually I can’t make weeks at home, so I can’t truthfully advertise homemade weeks. If I could, I would have made about a thousand of them already and quit my job. In the absence of that, however, I’ll document all the homemamde stuff I made this weekend. I’ll also try to document how those homemade things have panned out.

Today: Homemade windshield-washer fluid. (Really.)

Every day for the past two weeks when I’ve started up the Jeep, it dings at me and flashes the cryptic sign “LOWASH.” No pending engine failure here; I faced a more catastrophic disaster: LOW WINDSHIELD WASHER FLUID!! Being penniless and besides lacking the time to slog over to my local Schuck’s (unfriendly salespeople) or Wal-Mart (twenty minutes to park, thirty minutes to find product, seventeen hours to check out), last Saturday I thought, “Huh. Wonder if I could make my own.”

So I did.

Here’s the recipe*:
2 cups white vinegar
1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
3 quarts warmish water

I used this much liquid because I was very low on LOWASH fluid. It’s springtime around here (sorry, you east-coasters who are still buried in snow), and that means our local dirt road is a swamp with potholes. It makes for filthy vehicles, dirty glass, and consequently lots of used LOWASH fluid. If you live in the Clutches of Suburbia, you might not need to make so much. Reduce ingredients proportionately, and you may want to add blue food coloring so nobody drinks it. Or to make it look store bought. I assume no responsibility if your vehicle detonates halfway down the driveway. (Or if anything else goes wrong. Just so we’re clear.)

How does it work?

Perfectly. It cuts the mud, grime and smear from the glass, and so far it does not streak. I am one happy (and smug) customer. The alcohol lowers the freezing temperature of the water, and this morning I used it to clear the frost from the windshield. Wonder why I never tried that before.

We’ll see how it works in the summertime, when the bugs are out. Since spring is sprung already, summer is right around the corner, bugs included. If it doesn’t work, I’ll probably tinker with the recipe before I try to buy more at Schuck’s.

*This word is pronounced “REE-sype” in our house, since it’s actually spelled that way. Now you know.

WHAM!-thmp.

I pulled over as quick as I could and left the Jeep running. The windshield wipers kept windshield-wiping, vvvvvgungk. vvvvvgungk. I got out to see the damage.

A smashed turn-signal lens, a cracked grill, a big shallow dent in the door (which I didn’t even see until later), and some deer hairs. This is not the stuff of catastrophic accidents. While I looked, here came a pickup pulling up right behind us, his headlights glaring in. I walked back to see who came, and lo and behold it’s my friend Steve from work. He volunteered to help and grabbed a pair of gloves and a cell phone to use as a flashlight. (At night when it’s overcast, it’s darker than the inside of a cow around here.) Blood flowed from under the doe’s head, and her eyes were still open. We each took one glove, grabbed a leg, and hauled her off to the side of the road.

It’s sad.

It’s sadder that I can’t use the meat. I go hunting and don’t see boo, but this is the third deer I’ve killed driving a vehicle. We’re not allowed to use that meat; we have to let it rot at the side of the road. Go figure.

But that doe was heavy. Think about it. On three separate occasions I’ve been travelling at sixty miles an hour or better, and collided with a 150-pound weight atop 30” spindly legs,. And this is all the damage I’ve sustained?

I have to conclude that somebody’s watching out for me.

The power cables had corroded through at the battery terminals, and the car wouldn’t move.

If I’d known what I know now, I would have taken a cab to the local auto parts store and bought new battery terminal connectors. $15 Canadian and a cab ride, and the part is fixed. As it was, we had to rent a car and stay an extra day. There are worse places to be stranded, but the stress and additional expense could have been avoided. So now I’ll teach you the little I know.

Corrosion builds up on your car battery terminals unless you remove it. Here are the terminals on my Jeep’s battery. You can buy little felt rings that keep corrosion down, but all you have to do to clear existing corrosion is use a little baking soda and water.

Pour a couple of teaspoons of baking soda right on the terminal.

Add a quart or two of warmish water. You’ll immediately see the baking soda fizz as it removes the corrosion, and you just keep pouring the water on until it’s gone. This removes the gunk and the baking soda.

Here’s one terminal partially cleaned; I’m putting water on the other one. The blue stuff is what’s left after the baking soda fizzes, and I afterwards rinsed it off.

It would probably be well to take the connectors off and clean them up good, but you know me– I won’t have time till I’m 80. Or stranded somewhere.

If you have other ideas on keeping battery terminals clean, I’d love to hear them. I’m always eager to learn.

Here I am with my friend Frank, the genius behind the operation, engaged in the grisly procedure. The new fender fit like a charm. Once we had this bolted in, it was a simple matter to remove and replace the hood.

And …the New Dexter!

Just the same, only more unprepossessing than the Old Dexter! Folks along our country road would recognize his smashed-in hood and wave; now he’s even more distinctive in his three high-class colors: Faded Red, Primer Black, and Dirt Road.

If you look closely you’ll see that more than the hood was smashed in the encounter with the deer. The bumper was crushed in a few inches as well. This means that the hood can’t latch down properly, and is lifted erratically by the wind as I tool along. It only lifts a few millimeters, because the safety catch safely catches it, but there you are. I could take it to a body shop and have it fixed, but I have no buckage to do that. Well, it’s only temporary. As long as it runs.

Also if you look closely you’ll see the dead bumper to the right of the car. We will be taking that to the dump shortly, since we wouldn’t want our home to appear trashy.

Like the car I drive everywhere.

I like changing oil; it’s a good dirty job that needs to be done and doesn’t take long, and I can save a bundle doing it myself. Besides, it’s a good time to check other fluid levels in the vehicle, look at the air filter, and generally ensure I know what’s going on under the hood. (Don’t tell my cars I’m an amateur.)

Here I am changing the oil in the BGF last Saturday. You can tell Ford is not to keen on civilians doing maintenance work on their vehicles; they hid the oil filter in the wheel well. Go figure! It took me twenty minutes to find it the first time. But I foiled their evil plot, the oil has been changed, and everything else looks good. I also changed Dexter’s oil and filter, and I’m ready to change the Jeep’s as soon as I have some daylight without rain. (I love rain, but it’s not a good time to crawl under the car.)

I use synthetic oil. It’s a little pricier, but I like the fact that I only have to change the oil every six months or so–every General Conference–and that means big savings. $29 for oil and filter every six months versus $39 for the same every three months at Jiffy Lube translates into $174 (twice a year for three cars) vs. $468 (four times a year at Jiffy Lube for three cars). Yow. That’s almost $300 savings. I like saving money, especially when it means I can get my hands dirty.

We have a Bushy-Tailed Wood Rat building, and rebuilding, a nest in the engine of the BGF. So technically, I suppose we have a BTWR in the BGF, or ABTWRNDBGF.

How do we know it’s a BTWR? I met him one morning, trapped under the recycle bin on the back porch. The dogs had been sniffing around eagerly for some time while I was puttering near the wood shed. I heard a thump on the back porch, and when I came back a while later I found a creature trapped under the corner of the plastic recycle bin. I guess the dogs had knocked the bin down on it while chasing it around. The animal wasn’t hurt, but it couldn’t move; its Disney-cute head looked around from under one side of the box while its long furry tail waggled from under the other. I let him go thinking he would scamper back into the woods, but no dice. An hour later I saw him running back and forth on the top rail of the wood shed. Towards lunchtime he had disappeared from there and the dogs were sniffing around the boards and accumulated tools in the corner of the wood shed; but maybe I was making too much noise in my struggles to put up the shed roof because the dogs then took up their post at the BGF. And there, a few days later, Jessica found a nest in the engine.

She had opened the hood to see what the dogs were so eager to get at. They were spending every spare moment around and under the BGF, and Honey would even wedge her upper body in above the tire so as to sniff more closely at the engine. When Jess opened the hood the rat scurried away, and she found a large nest in the engine. She had heard that some rodents dine on plastic hoses and engine parts and we can’t afford to have our transportation become rodent food, so she put out rat poison. No dice. I opened the hood the next day and found a nest in the rebuilding stages. Well.

That’s life in the woods, I guess.

I barely registered a gray blur on my right before a heavy slam shook the whole car. My head jerked back in time to see, out of the tail of my left eye, a remarkable sight. A deer was in the air, sailing back and to my left like a ball tossed over the shoulder. Its mouth was open. It must have been the companion of the one I’d seen on the left, jumping in front of me while I was distracted, and was thrown in the air by the force of the impact. I must have glanced forward and back again, because the next I saw the animal was tumbling forward on the left side of the highway, over and over itself like a tumbleweed, in a horrible uncontrolled cartwheel that surely broke its back.

I stopped the music and the car. I was already a quarter mile away from the point of impact, and the deer’s body was invisible in the grass. I got out to inspect the damage. Dexter’s hood was caved in and kinked open a little; but he still idled quietly, his headlights still burned, and no fluid seemed to be leaking from underneath.

I got back in the car and drove to my assignment, subdued and grateful. A deer has significant body mass perched up on thin legs. My Honda was moving fast, low to the ground, with a sloping hood and a cracked windshield. How is it that the deer did not come up and at me through the windshield? Why was the damage not more severe? How is it that in that river valley an elk or–heaven forbid–a moose did not find me instead?

We both know, of course. God looks after His children, just as any good father does. Those who by a queer and pitiable blindness do not believe in God would seem forced to rely rather heavily on coincidence.