Repair

After nearly a year of gathering moss, Convivia and her crew are overcoming inertia and getting ready to cruise again. This week, we took advantage of the public holiday and school break and got Convivia out of the river and onto her anchor. Before we could do that though, there were a number of boat-list items that needed to be knocked off. Dodger repair Our dodger was hit hard during the big hail storm. Several large holes were punched in the old, brittle, windshield panes. We couldn’t go anywhere without fixing them. Unfortunately, this was a much larger task than it seemed at first blush. The old Sunbrela was worn out, and even if we could have salvaged it, the hardware was installed over the plexiglass, and the zippers were shot. The upshot was that the whole frame had to be remade. ...

From time to time I am reminded that my culture has no coming of age tradition. Some of the effects of this deficit are subtle, some more obvious. This weekend, as I near my 35th birthday I experienced another Man Making Moment. Man Making Moments are different for everyone. I suspect many are like me and derive some significant part of their manliness ideal from their fathers. For me, the image of my dad under the hood, fixing, tuning and explaining our car’s inner workings, has left a mark. When the AAA guy confirmed my suspicion that the starter had failed on the ManVan I was both anxious and eager. This was going to be a greasy, cramped, and physical repair, but I knew I could do it. Never mind that I had never even heard a story about someone replacing a starter. I grabbed my socket set (thanks again Dad) and crawled under the truck. An hour later I had the starter motor out and Allison and I headed down to Kragen to get a replacement. I was quite surprised when the Nick (the Kragen sales guy) handed me a huge honkin box. Aparently I had only removed part of the starter. The rest of the job was going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated. ...