Why is everything broken??
Part 1 - the van
My tales of life, cats and travel contain a significant amount of wry reflection on things which go wrong or break (including cats, and me). Like most people, I try to find the humour in such potential disasters, but I do refuse to brush them aside as "nothing". See http://www.whatissheonaboutnow.com/is-it-just-me for why I think this should be allowed, tolerated, accepted, sympathized with. Mostly we laugh at these accounts when they have happened to someone else and they have come out of relatively unscathed.
It's the complexity of the crap which happens to me which winds me up and wears me out. Nothing is ever without implications, complications or ramifications, and if you don't believe me, try this - now concentrate, you'll need to.
The poor old Nissan Vanette which does daily service here in Spain, for the last err 5 years is it now? - it isn't in the best of health and I do try to treat it more kindly than I used to. The annual flat battery which resulted from it sitting all summer while I was away, (whereas the UK Transit was always flat after being in Spain all winter) did seem to get a bit worse this past year. Along with the handbrake but that's another story or at least another part of this one. So where we're at right now is that the alternator is suspected as culprit for a battery which will no longer support more than one short journey whereas show it the jump leads from another car and it leaps eagerly back to life. This is all very well but if you stop and consider your own driving habits, there is a good chance that you "nip" here and there a lot of the time rather than doing solid long journeys of 30mins plus. Let's consider the daily problems this is causing me : things which are to be dropped off or collected are frequently well within the 30 mins or even 20 mins drive-to-recharge limit, so are the recycling bins, the petrol station, most of my social life, and indeed the garage.
Now a tight budget already requires me not to go hurtling off on a whim on those battery charging alternator working madly journeys, so I plan the errands along the way but now they have to be allocated according to how well the battery will be after the previous leg of the journey. This takes a lot of planning (and the constant presence of the jump leads) including not parking where the bonnet and therefore the battery is, and leaving room for someone to get near enough if I do need a jump start.
At home, this ought not to be such a problem - after all I have a transit van with a good alternator (as far as I know) - but what it has is a battery behind virtually under the driver's seat making it damn near impossible to reach with leads. Ah! I hear you cry, but there is a terminal under the bonnet......yes, there is one, but the negative has to be clamped to a metal part of the chassis, and you just try finding one of those. I've even watched the RAC man scratch his head before trying anything (that was when the Transit needed jump starting. Vans which have a time delay before the interior light goes off in the back don't fare too well at festivals. But that's another van and another story).
So it is my very good fortune that my friend has left his UK reg car here while he is away, and I can use that to jump start my Nissan. So long as I now park leaving room to get his car out from behind mine, that is. I'm not using it much so I guess it will only be a matter of time before HIS battery starts to suffer, but I digress, well a bit, because I am factoring all that into my use and parking of the Nissan. Not only must I leave room for his car to reach my vanette with the leads but I must also consider his battery and indeed his fuel level; it's enough that I've already had to nip to the petrol station in his car to get a can of diesel for the vanette once because there is no point in jump starting it only to need to stop half a mile up the road for fuel.
My house is on two levels and the drive goes up a slope to where the vehicles are parked alongside the upper level of the house. The garage is below. My stock for Sunday market is partly in the garage and the rest in the UK van which means the van has to be moved part way through loading, just a few yards, which can mean a jump start, followed by another one when ready to leave. Which at 7am in the dark is not ideal.
I need to load the van in case it doesn't rain and I can work tomorrow's market. To do this I have to load first from the garage down below and then bring the car up to the top level to get the rest from the Transit van. I will need to get Rod's car out and use it to jump start the vanette. I also have very low fuel level, as indeed does his car. I have enough money for one or the other. The petrol station is too close to go with the vanette if it's only just started. I will probably have to jump start the vanette again in the morning and then still have the same problem with the fuel. SO if I go in Rod's car and get fuel....but if I do that I need to put fuel in his as well, and I haven't got enough money to do both, and anyway I can't find the petrol can.
Solution, jump start the Nissan and drive as far as possible before stopping at a fuel station preferably before running out of diesel. Then if it won't start in the morning all I have to do is another jump start but at least it has fuel to get to the market. 18 minutes lated, re-fuelled, it won't start and has to be pushed out of the forecourt where a very kind Dutch couple (who are market traders it turns out!) recharge the battery via the leads for 20 mins. I'm then too scared to go to Mercadona with my last 5 euros for cat food (5 mins away) and risk it happening again, so I just go home and finish loading the van.
1. 2. At home : Will the van start? yes/no
Can you get the car out to jump start it? yes/no
Is there enough fuel in the car to do this? yes/no
How far will it get on the fuel in it? far enough/not far enough
Can you get to the petrol station with the car and a fuel can? yes/no
Can you afford any diesel? yes/no/how much
2. If you succeed in jump starting the van and it does have enough fuel: do you need to stop the engine sooner than 20 mins minimum driving? yes/no
Have you got your jump leads with you? yes (there is no "no" option here )
3. Once you get where you are going : Can you park somewhere with the bonnet accessible and room for another car to get close enough to jump start you? yes/no
Is there anyone where you are whom you can ask to do this? yes/no
When you have been jump started and gone home again, will you forget to make sure you have enough fuel for next time? yes/no
Will you need to repeat all this again next time you want to go somewhere? yes (again there is no "no" option)
Start again at 1.
I should point out perhaps that the obvious solution, (get it fixed), another costs a lot and the garage is about 4 mins from my house, two sufficiently large objections to this being achieved easily.............
,