Tag: car

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the patented five step method for removing ice from one’s car windows

How to remove ice from one’s car at 6.30am in the morning

Step One: Realise the ice is there. This may take a while. You hop in the car sleepily, and cannot see out. Turn on the windscreen wipers. The windscreen wipers do not move. Become confused. Try to roll down your window. It does not move. The realisation may gradually dawn that there is ice preventing both items from moving. If you come from an area where it does not often get to 0oC overnight (or if it does, you’re usually not near the car until after things have warmed up a bit), this may take a while.

Step Two: Realise you cannot go anywhere until you convince the ice to leave. At this point you may begin pondering how on earth you can convince the ice to leave. The trusty saucepan of warm water (as much as Canadians may mock you for this idea) is a long way away.

Step Three: Come up with a plan of attack. You remember you have a container of water in the car. Maybe that will be enough to convince the ice to leave. You pour it on the windscreen, freeing the windscreen wipers. The rest of the ice seems more stubborn though.

Step Four: Become exasperated with the ice. It remains stubbornly on your windscreen, and although the windscreen wipers are moving now, they’re just scraping over the top of the ice. You still can’t roll your window down. You’ve turned the blowy hot air on, and it isn’t making the ice go away yet. Maybe you’ll go and stand and glare at it, and flap at it in an irritated and half asleep fashion, trying to convince it to go away.

Step Five: Have a stroke of genius. After searching the car and failing to find any useful ice scraping utensils, you remember you have a wallet full of plastic cards. By this point the other ice removal attempts (particularly the feeble flapping) have made the ice more amenable to leaving, and you can scrape a viewing hole quite easily.

Success: You may now drive away.

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general

how not to jump start your car

I was spending the weekend at my parent’s place in Southern NSW, but they had headed off to Melbourne early on Sunday morning for my Dad’s high school reunion. Meanwhile, my brother and I were still at home. I tried to start my car to leave, and realise I’d left the headlights on, grr, thereby flattening the battery.

We managed to find some jumper leads (note to self – buy jumper leads), and went to jump start the car. I’d never actually connected the leads myself before to jump start anything, neither had Bryden – but he had gotten a lesson in how to do it just a few weeks ago, so we figured we should be able to manage (positive to positive, etc etc, what could go wrong). There are sparks – we decided that was ok. But then there was some smoke. Oops. We ran into the house and ask the internet what to do. Found lots of wonderful stories about sparks igniting things and exploding batteries. But worked out what we were doing was right – we wandered back out to the cars to try and work out what went wrong… and spot our silly mistake oops, the terminals are the other way round in my car, and we’d connected positive to negative. Lots of oops.

We got things fixed up, started my car, left both car and ute running, everything seemed good – I checked the things that could have been affected by the smoking region… everything seems to work still. So that’s alright. But after a while, I decided to turn the car off and see if it will start again. No. We try jump starting again. Nope, battery won’t do anything.

I resigned myself to leaving my car behind and catching the coach/train back to Melbourne (meaning I’ll get home at 8 in the night instead of 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and get to spend some quality time with bogans on the way). However, we came up with a cunning plan – the battery in the Mazda is about the same size … yes, the same size, but as we discovered when we tried to hook it up, it has different terminals. Curses. So, new plan – call the NRMA and see if they’ll come and bring me a new battery and fix my car. The man comes from Narrandera with a new battery, and my car works again, hooray!

poddy calves

Poddy calves feeding frenzy

poddy calves
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curses, curses, and more curses

After waiting and waiting for my Visa to turn up, I called the consulate helpline on Friday. I was charged $1.05/minute to listen to their menus, and was finally given the option to talk to a real person, for $2.75/minute. I explained my situation to the real person, and she put me through to the Melbourne consulate. I then re-explained my situation: Had interview over a month ago, have paid all the fees, have even repaid one after the amount needed was lowered a few days AFTER my interview, meaning that the system was unable to process my money order for a higher amount. The man on the other end of the phone confirmed that my Visa hadn’t been processed, but seeing as they seemed to have all of the necessary paperwork, he had no idea why. I’m to call him back tomorrow afternoon. I have this bizarre idea, that maybe, one day, after waiting over a year, I might finally get to America. And then I might finally finish this PhD. Maybe.

Oh, and the other curses. My car has broken down, and is leaking from places it shouldn’t be leaking. Have to get it to the mechanics.

On the plus side, the weekend at the Grampians was good. Got very sore. Not many photos, as we were climbing in a two, so there was no spare person to be the photographer.