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The Winter of My Discontent: AC Crapshoot
- @susanquinn did a great post on the vagaries of “winter” in Florida. Where I live in FL, we call people that live where Susan does “Northerners.”
I live in the Conch Republic (capital city: Margaritaville). My current, post-Irma abode is just over 100 miles from the southernmost point of the United States. We don’t “do” winter. Okay, maybe we hope for a couple of days in JAN or FEB where the temp only hovers at around 50-55 for a couple of days, but only so that it decrements the bug population in JUN, JUL, and AUG. My weather bug app says that, over the next 10 days, the lowest high will be 71. That day is an anomaly. Most days the high temp will be between 75 and 80. Last week, my super-cool-guy watch was telling me that temps were typically in the high 80s.
So, blizzards? Sleet? Snow? Arctic inversions?
Pass.
Those climatic extremes are for all y’all who live in northern climes. Like, say, the Florida panhandle.
But, while frostbite will not be a concern, the requirement for air conditioning is year-round. The inside of my car, coming out of work today, was make-a-blue-tick-hound-pant hot.
A little over a month ago, I bought a car off of one of the dive instructor puppies next door. My eldest daughter (call sign: PROM QUEEN)’s vehicle had just given up the ghost, and Adam had a detailed list of the maintenance that he’d been deferring, knowing that he was going to sell the car. We struck a deal that I’d take the ’04 Subaru to my mechanic, who Adam knows and who I trust implicitly, and half the costs of the maintenance would be stricken from the price of the vehicle.
“So,” said Vic, the uber mechanic,”Is this car just going to be a little island hopper, or is it going to be a long-range, highways and byways type of vehicle?”
PQ has a lot going on, over the next coupla three months, so we dutifully reported to Vic that she would be traveling regularly between Gainesville, Del Ray, the Keys, and Ft. Myers.
Vic said, “Look, if it were my baby girl, I wouldn’t have her on the highways logging those kind of miles in that Subaru.”
I leaned up against the counter and put my head in my hands, knowing what was coming. “How would that vehicle do driving up to the base in Homestead every day?”
“Oh, no worries, there.”
Awesome. So I gave up my ’18 Nissan Altima and started driving the ’04 Subaru. Which is fine, but…
The air conditioning is whacked. It’s not even that it doesn’t work. Sometimes it straight up doesn’t work. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it’ll work for 10 or 15 minutes and then die. I hate inconsistency.
When I took it back to Vic, he and his boys determined that the problem was the electromagnetic clutch on the compressor; it’s bad and needs to be replaced. As I stated, I trust Vic implicitly. He could’ve told me I need a new transmogrifier or that my dilithium crystals were depleted. Doesn’t matter. Vic’s word is automotive law.
So every time I get in the car to go to work, the temperature is in the high 70s to high 80s. When I get in the car to drive home from work, the car has been marinating in high 80s heat all day. It’s not really a problem. If I drive into work and get swamp butt from no AC, I can shower and change clothes right there. If I drive from work and get swamp butt from no AC, who cares?
It does kind of bug me, though, that having all the windows down, moving at speed, disrupts the even burn of the fine, Cuban-seed, Dominican-grown cigar that I like to enjoy during my end-of-the-day commute. Eh, First World problems.
Prom Queen was packing up the Altima for one of her myriad trips, and I told her that I hope she appreciated that I was giving up my car to square her away.
She patted my shoulder.
“Our car. It’s our car.”
Published in General
I love my kids.
But they do not get to even drive my car.
I so envy you…
Buttercup — Just get the A/C fixed!
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the January 2020 Group Writing Theme: Winter of Our Discontent. Share your tale of winter, discontent, content, or maybe tell us a tale of someone done wrong by an author or film maker. There are plenty of dates still available. Our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
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College turned PQ into a Bernie Bro!
He could have paid cash for a better car? And you co-signed a loan for him just so he can later get a home loan? Ruining his perfect “thin file”? So much crazy in that paragraph. “Co-sign” is pronounced “Insane”, in case you haven’t heard it used in conversation.
Side note: a young engineer with a year or two in a real job would have no trouble getting a mortgage from any competent lender in spite of no credit history. It is called manual underwriting.
No argument with any of that. So he buys a better car with cash available. Borrowing for anything other than an appreciating asset is not a good habit to teach young people. (Or anyone.)
Tackling repairs without parental oversight (whether they finish with help or not) is a mark of parental accomplishment. My boy is there, too. (Also an engineer, like his father.)
I hope he doesn’t pass on the borrowing to his children.
{ Have you ever listened to Dave Ramsey? }
Each child got a different first car experience, as each had different circumstances.
I did have our daughter select one [new] car I bought, as our plan to help launch her after graduation 2 years hence was to sell her that car. The car searching process was educational for her, as she learned that the cute and fun cars that initially captured her eye were not necessarily all that practical (and even at age 20 she had a strong practical bent). I drove the car for 2 years, and then we did sell her the car (at a buyer-attractive price), complete with a written financing agreement from the Bank of Parents, and she did dutifully pay the monthly payments until she fully paid for the car. She drove it for ten years, until the birth of her first child, when she sold it to a coworker of our son-in-law for that coworker’s child. So the car keeps moving to new generations.
We bought an old Subaru for our son and gave it to him his second year of college, as he was going to college on an ROTC scholarship (saving Parents $$$$ in tuition, room, etc.), and was attending a college in remote northern New York state where places are far apart and other transportation options are very limited. Our son loved that Subaru, but it did require some care. Having two head gaskets on the flat four cylinder engine doubles the chance of a head gasket failure.
You live in the place where US1, mile marker 0 is? I used to say the Florida’s main reason for being was to provide something solid to drive on on the way to Key West.
I hung out down there a bit back in the 80s, loved it. I’m from Ithaca, NY, and there seemed to be a cross-cultural exchange between there and here (along with the one between Ithaca and Boulder). Lots of friends in construction had dual lives – summer north and winter Key West. I was never smart enough to join them, and spent most of my winters in the glorious, freezing cold Finger Lakes of NY.
I’ve been back several times, but a lot changed there since the 80s. (Fountainbleu burned down, lots of time-share condo development, general commercialization, etc, etc.) But this gripe is probably true of everyplace; we all think that one time was special and everything has turned to s*** since.
I liked the Conch Republic a lot. Green Parrot was a favorite bar in the world for me. I’d love to hear your take on living there.
So, I live up in Key Largo, as I stated about 100 miles (or about 2.5 hours on the Overseas Highway, with the caveat that it only takes one moron to screw up everybody’s commute/road trip).
I don’t go to Key West very often. While I do like wild and crazy people, I don’t like tourists who feel like they have to act wild and crazy because of their geographic location. My observation is that the professional partiers (and I include in the definition of “professional” the ability to have a world class time without getting busted for DUI, drugs, or some kind of public mischief charge) are in the southern Upper Keys. Islamorada. Say, MM 85 thru 70. They know how to do it right.
Yeah, for an 04 vehicle. Vic and his team assess that it’ll be cheaper to get a compatible compressor than find an electromagnetic clutch. Were I willing to pay out the yin-yang, the problem would already be fixed. But if Vic is going to save me a couple hundred, I’ll sweat. For a little bit.
Plus, while Vic conducts his search, I’m somewhere where you gonna sweat no matter how good the AC in your car is. When I return to CONUS, hopefully he’ll have something for me.
Good to know. I liked the trip down, and I forget about that when I shake my head at what Key West has become. Stopped off at a few good restaurants and other things on Islamorada, Marathon. Even had a crazy New Year’s on Stock Island once (but that’s a little too close and too crazy). I’ll accept your recommendation and maybe “See the Upper Keys, and not on my hands and knees” to paraphrase an old T-shirt.
The police in Key West are very accommodating of tourists. For instance, they will provide you with pants if by any chance you don’t have any on when you are detained.
And you know this because…?
It’s kinda hazy …
Mm-hmm.
You should have gone with “… or so I am told.”
Hopefully, it has plenty of cool, adult beverages.
Boss–you make me laugh every time I read your stuff. Stay safe.