The previous part of this story can be found here, but if you’re just joining us the beginning is all the way back here if you’d like to catch up.
September 2013 | 167,500 miles
And now we get to my first taste of magic.
In addition to all that other stuff, the Cherokee had a problem with the driver-side window where it wouldn’t roll down very well. I looked into it and found there to be a pretty gnarled up worm drive, so a new regulator was in order.
But there was another issue related to the new-fangled power windows on this thing. The child lock button on the windows, that feature that gives you the power to restrict the freedom of all passengers from enjoying fresh air like a you were some sort of communist dictator, was, like communism, broken. Never had to worry about anything like this back in the horse and buggy days of the old Jeep.
Fixing it would be as simple as throwing money at a new part. But there was a familiar problem…same problem as every other time … young guy, lots of kids, blue collar know nothing, with a massive amount of student loan debt … you know the profile. When you’re trying to crawl out of a hole like debt, you eventually get determined and start to look for the shortest road to freedom. We were trying to save money wherever we could to hurl into the debt monster. And that meant trying something different.
Another level up. Fixing parts versus reflex replacing them.
The switch was disgusting, but that wasn’t the issue. I had to go deeper in order to find the real problem. It was a cracked solder point on the underlying circuit board. The fickle nature of the dictator switch was caused by a poor connection, and I would have to employ magic to mend it.
Behold the wand of a level one wizard. Melting metal in order to bring something back to life just sounds like sorcery to me…in the good kinda way. I’m not sure why this got me so excited, nor why the thought of learning to braze and weld in the future does the same, but I really love this kinda stuff.
To me it is the difference between babysitting and conceiving a child. Any civilized person can can be expected to do thirty minutes of the former, but it takes magic and a change of life for the latter. I am a maintenance man by profession. I fix stuff that other people break. I often feel that I am in many ways a professional babysitter of people pretending to be adults. But I don’t create things.
I want to get to the place where I can create new things out of what my hands touch, and when I see fabrication and entrepreneurs and writers and artists and parents doing that kind of stuff, it’s inspiring.
It isn’t soldering, or fixing a circuit board, or even welding steel that I’m necessarily talking about. It’s the mentality and skill combined to take any idea and bring it to life with hard work. That’s magic. That’s real wizard level stuff. I want to get there someday. And here was me on my first day at Hogwarts or whatever dope school Gandalf went to when he was a kid.
Well, the repair worked. Actually, all of the repairs worked. And so did the upgrades. Axle seals & bearings, brake system, random nick-nacks and doodads, and the window stuff. The Jeep was better than ever, and in some ways so was I. Wizard wannabe, level noob.