Packing up to head home from scout camp 2022
Let me start at the beginning... We lived here comfortably for two years without a car thanks to a pretty good public transport system and friends who helped us with rides to scouty places that were less accessible. We finally got a car and I'm so glad to have it now that My Girl is doing sports at school with early and late practices and weekend games and races. I must say that it's a love/hate thing with this car. We found one that met our basic requirements: not a standard transmission, big enough for My Boy to sit in the back seat and take us to scout camp and back, close enough to pick it up, and priced so that if we needed to push the remains off a cliff we'd be OK with it.
We found a 2005 Toyota Corolla just outside of town at a rather sketchy looking car lot. (One day I'll have a car younger than my kids, but not yet.) This was late fall of 2021. I don't remember the exact date, maybe around the November 1 holiday. It needed a new battery and a little touch up paint on the bumper. So we left it there expecting to pick it up the next week. Well, the weeks came and went and we couldn't get ahold of the sales person. We thought we might have been scammed. At the end of December we finally got through. It turned out that the sales person and then the whole office staff had COVID which closed the shop. We were finally able to pick it up in January about 10 weeks after agreeing to buy the thing. But that was just the beginning.
Thanks to The Princess Bride I call this the fire swamp car.
We'll never survive.
You only say that because no one ever has.
- Westley: I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.
- Buttercup: Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.'s?
- Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.
Our first problem was the battery and electrical system. I quickly learned the hard way that the battery and electrical system have a leak that drains the battery if it sits for more that a couple days. I also learned that if you jump it in the normal ways it blows a fuse or two. Yada yada, tow truck because it is stuck in drive and will only start in neutral and won't shift to neutral without power. Yada yada. New battery. New friend, Alfredo, at the garage a few doors down from the parking garage.
So now we know and either take the car out every few days to recharge the battery or disconnect it with an ingeniously simple little device that sits between the battery and the cable. Pop the hood, twist twist problem solved.
When we bought the car we didn't realize that it has a SEMI-automatic transmission. Mostly because we didn't know that such a thing existed. We don't really have them in the US. This means (I think) that it has a standard transmission with a computer that shifts for you. You can also manually shift. The problem with this is that if you drive it like an automatic it wears and overheats the clutch. So it will get to the point that in heavy traffic the clutch will overheat and just drop into neutral until it cools down. You just have to sit and wait. Long story short I got to learn Italian words that I never thought I'd need like marcia, attuatore, and frizione. Alfredo had tried to save us money by using rebuilt pieces. It didn't last.
We put in our second transmission last spring literally the day before we were scheduled to leave for scout camp. The second time we went to the official Toyota shop further away. He asked us several times if we really wanted to make such a big repair on such an old broken down car. (Crazy Americans) He finally agreed when I said that it was cheaper than a new car. (True, but not by much) He ordered the parts and they arrived just in time to do the repair so that we could get to scout camp on time. We headed to Switzerland.
By this time I was feeling better about the car. I was getting used to the quirks and to driving in Rome. The secret is to imagine you are swimming in a school of sardines. Just go with the flow and mostly ignore the lines on the roads. Everyone else does.
This fall I was just about done in by the R.O.U.S.s. Rains Of Unusual Size. I drove to Naples for My Girl's cross country meet on the Navy base. There is only one home meet and this is really the only away meet that is reasonable to travel to. The others are a full day of driving or more each way. Rain was predicted so I came prepared with a jacket and umbrella. I just didn't anticipate how much it would rain. I parked at the gate and went in with a friend who could get guests on base. (The gate guards say Welcome aboard" since it's a Navy base.) The parents waited in the food court while it rained harder than I have ever seen it rain for a few hours with hail and plenty of lightning. It was so dark, except for the lightning. We joke about storms being "nautical". This went beyond nautical to biblical. They finally ran at 2 pm under dark skies after a 4 hour delay.. There were teams from Sicily, Spain, and Bahrain so they didn't want to cancel it altogether. That's a long way to travel for a race. A few minutes into the race it dumped again, soaking all the runners in no time. My Girl said that it was raining so hard it was hard to see. For a minute I thought the rain had turned back into hail. Maybe it was just really big loud drops. I thought it would slow them down, but maybe running in the rain is the secret sauce. She and her friend got new personal best times and she finished 5th overall out a field that included eight schools.
This wasn't the worst of it and doesn't really do it justice.
Just after the start of the race.
By the time we were ready to leave there was blue sky but you could see the effects of the rain. The parking lot at the gate had flooded over the curb and into the gate house and left a thick layer of mud. I don't know how deep it got. I got in my car and the seats were wet. I thought that the seals on the doors must have leaked. I drove away and got about 50 yards before the car died. It wouldn't go again. I called on a scout friend who helped me get the car towed to a shop. She was a life saver. Another friend gave me a ride to Rome and My Girl a ride home from the school. As they unloaded my poor soggy car at the shop I could see water draining from the insides including the half full hazard lights, the effects of the R.O.U.S.
We spent the week thinking about how to salvage our nearly new transmission. That and the tank of diesel were the only things of value in the whole heap.
It turned out that the water in the lot got deep enough that it flooded the engine, complete with water in the tank. The interior had flooded from below and through the doors. Fortunately, they were able to drain and dry the engine and the electrical dried out enough so that it returned to its previous dilapidated state. It took a bit of time, but it worked. We lost the tank of watery diesel, but the transmission still works.
Exactly one week later I took the train down to pick it up. My friend messaged me while I was on the train. The car wouldn't start...
Sigh...
I thought at first that it would be the battery, but no. It was the starter motor. It seems that with all the water something in there got a little rusty. After a few tries it started and seems OK now. Maybe my fire swamp has four terrors instead of three.
The car and I are home and now I need to go pick up My Girl.
P.S.
After about a week of intermittent warnings, the starter motor (motorino di avviomento) gave out for good. It took another tow truck (carro attrezzi) and a trip to Alfredo's to get it replaced. It was a quick overnight job. So not too bad. I hope it holds out for awhile. This isn't the Italian I want to learn.
