My car, my friends

Today was another day added to the list of days wasted on the car. Yesterday it decided that the best way to get my attention was to stop the shift-stick somewhere between park and reverse. This was turning the key in the ignition does nothing but produce a click, light up the dashboard lights, and start that annoying damn bell that is supposed to inspire me to belt myself to the seat. These things all lead to the suspicion that a dead battery is not the problem, as they all require a certain amount of energy from the power cells. Of course, the next thought I had was, hmm, didn’t I just change the skiptibarki (I’ve only learned the Icelandic name for that particular part) a year or two ago? That means that I knew from the start that this was probably not something usual.

In World War II, pilots and navy men complained of gremlins in their planes and boats. A gremlin is a little demon- or goblin-like creature that lives in a complicated machine and does nothing but make the machine not run properly. They talked about fixing one thing only to have something else begin to malfunction immediately. There are gremlins in my car. There’s no question about that.

As it turns out, the gremlins have destroyed a solenoid that acts a safety precaution. This solenoid drives a little piece of metal that stops the shift stick from being moved until the break is pressed. The theory is that children cannot press the break in and move the stick, so when the solenoid is working properly, only they cannot change gears. As with so many of the other things I’ve had to replace on my American version of a very popular car, I will probably have to order the solenoid from America myself to avoid the long wait that always accompanies placing an order for a spare part through the Subaru dealer.

All that said, I have to thank all of my friends and my dear wife for keeping me in a good mood despite the fact that I’ve now wasted about 10 full hours on that danged car. I have to thank Grímur, Olga, and Hrönn, especially for all of their help. I know it sounds like I am trying to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. Maybe I am doing that, in fact, but that’s the way I am. I think it’s a big deal that my car breaks down so often. But I also think it’s a big deal that my friends and wife are so great when anything bad happens.