Relative Something

Did I mention that something appears to be dripping underneath my car? For the record, I am not inclined to bother with looking under the hood of my vehicle (I wouldn’t know what I was looking at) except maybe to fill the windshield washing fluid or access the battery to give someone a jump. And it can be more than a year between such occasions. Decades ago, we used to look under the hood to check the oil level every other time we stopped at a filling station. I gave up on that after about the thousandth time of seeing no change in level. I’ve enjoyed the luxury of driving vehicles that don’t burn or leak oil. Until now, I guess that is.

This current situation snuck up on me when I dropped the car off for service the last time. They changed the oil and did the once-over checks they do (or say they do… how would I know?) whenever they change the oil. The final report was a general clean bill of health, except for one little thing. They found a leak up near the turbo. Something that may take some time to uncover, so it would require a separate appointment. That really gives a person a wonderful feeling, to be given back your car and told it is leaking, but they don’t know from where but go ahead and drive it anyway.

I took it back in right away first thing on the next Monday. Left it with them for the whole day so they could tear it all apart and come up with whatever had gone terribly wrong. They didn’t need the whole day. Turns out it was just a little clamp on a hose that could be replaced with no trouble at all. I was lucky.

Now that I was suddenly hyper-aware of leaks from my car, I finally noticed a bit of a stain that had formed on my garage floor where I park. Being so in control of my man-cave of a garage, all I needed to do was get some of the special floor-dry gravel used to clean up oil spills that every guy stocks in his garage. Yeah, right. I went in the house and got some kitty litter and sprinkled it on the stain. In a couple of days I noticed it was working great and absorbing residue that I figured was already dry. A few more days later, I began to notice there were still some new drops hitting the spot. My vast experience with car ownership has long taught me that once a fluid like oil has leaked under the hood, it can take days to weeks after the leak is stopped, for the stuff that already leaked to make its way down to the low spot to drip on the floor. So, I figured I would give it some time before I run to my service professionals with cries of, “It’s still leaking!”

This is a skill I have honed well. I can ‘give-things-time’ better than just about anything else I do. For some reason, even when I reach the point of deciding, “Uh-oh, better look into that…”, I can still continue to give it plenty of time. I pity the vehicle that waits on me to take action in a timely manner.

But hey, if I can get around to writing about it, I can make the call to my car guys. I now have an appointment for Thursday. We’ll see how my luck holds.