The Price of Blessings

View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

Very appropriate that it came today. The challenges to me normally come in mechanical packages. I went to the opera on Saturday in the City (That is San Francisco for those who aren't in the know), it's about 50 miles from home. I kept Lulu (my car) at a brisk 75mph all the way there and got through the basic streets towards Portola and Laguna Honda just fine. I started to climb Pacheco to get to 9th. street and there was a major hesitation in the car before it lurched forward into motion. I came to the next stop sign and I figured it was just a bad press on the accelerator on my part, but it happened again, and again I figured I was at fault. I always presume it's a PEBCAK* (Not the same for a car, but the premise is valid) so I tried it again. And again I had problems. Carol, my friend, lives on one of the steepest hills I've ever seen. Not one of the steepest hills in the City, but too steep to walk unless you want a coronary. So parking requires that you pull up to the curb, back up and curb your tires. Even with the emergency break on I wasn't able to control or hold my position on the hill well enough to maneuver into position. So, I backed out of it, using gravity and then went down the street thinking it would be easier to park on the flat of 10th instead of the hill of Ortega...but true to form, there wasn't any parking on the flats. So, I pulled up the hill again, trying to be as close to the curb as possible so I could curb my wheels and just turned her off and went to the opera.

The opera was FANTASTIC. Beautiful, lush, brilliant, everything that I had hoped and wanted in an opera. It almost made me forget about the looming problem ahead of me. Driving home. Well, don't fret, I didn't drive. I stayed over at Carol's and worked at finding a place that had a diagnostic department open on Sunday and had the techs on staff to do the work. Well, I found one....IN PLEASANT HILL. Which meant a $180 towing bill. Well, they couldn't diagnose it until Monday (today) but I was pretty sure it was the belts. To my knowledge they haven't been changed during the whole life of the car....162,000+ miles. It seemed about due.

Carol was kind enough to drive me home after Church. And I arranged with PJ to take me to work this morning and Isis to take me to Pleasant Hill tonight to pick up my car....which is all moot now because, well, it won't be ready tonight. It would be good if I can pick it up tomorrow.

Well, the good news is it's not the engine. The engine diagnostic came back fine. The bad news is, and you know there's always bad news when someone starts the sentence with good news...the transmission is shot. It's shot to the tune of $1,528. You know, horses don't cost that much and when they break, you can shoot them. I can't complain, I really can't. Like I said, I've got over 162,000 miles on her and I've only had her 10 years....you do the math. I can be assured with the new water pump (put on at the beginning of the year), the new (yet used) transmission, and the new tires (put on at the beginning of the year) I should be set with her for the next few years or so which is when I intend on putting the rest of the miles on her so I can trade her in for a hybrid of some sort. I'm hoping by that time competition will have driven the prices down.

But like the quote above says, look at challenges as opportunities. It's an opportunity to insure my safety, it's an opportunity to keep my car for as long as I want to/need to until it's time to upgrade to a more ecologically friendly model. And it has taught me to stop trying to think of ways to comfortably get out of going to church because if you look hard enough, Heavenly Father will provide you a way. I'm blessed that this didn't happen while I was trucking along at 75mph, or while I was at the top of a hill with someone behind or worse, with a person behind me. I could have hurt myself or worse, someone else. I am truly blessed, even with a $1500 price tag.

*PEBCAK: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard