desert driving adventures
So I'm taking my first-ever vacation day tomorrow and using the long weekend to visit my dad up in central California. I'm flying out of Ontario tonight — well, in theory. My flight is delayed by an hour right now, which is fine by me since I was about an hour late getting to the airport. Both delays can probably be at least partially blamed on the spotty rain that's moving through Southern California this weekend.
Now, my main problem is that I didn't leave for the airport excessively early, as I'd originally planned to do. But add to that all sorts of random auto maintenance, and I would've been a goner if my flight had left on time.
First of all, before I left Palm Springs, I decided it was finally time to check the air in my seemingly low tires. After I discovers that all four of them were not-just-seemingly low, I made a pit stop at the Tramway Shell station to bump up my tires by a few PSI. Even though I don't think I'd ever aired up car tires before, the whole thing was pretty easy to figure out and I completed my task quickly and easily.
If only that were also true of my next bit of maintenance — changing out my windshield wiper blades.
I had discovered that at least one of them was busted on Monday when I drove around in the rain, but for some reason I wasn't bright enough to switch them out on one of the three sunny days in between the last bit of rain we saw in the desert and this latest rainy-ish day.
I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn't hit any rain on my way to Ontario, but around Whitewater it started sprinkling, and by the time I reached Banning, there was some serious business rain going on. That's when I discovered that not just one but both of my wiper blades were pretty much useless. Not wanting to be a rolling traffic hazard, I got off the freeway at a Beaumont exit that miraculously had an auto parts store within a stone's throw of the 10.
After I pulled into the Kragen parking lot, I took a quick look at the page in my car's user manual that detailed how to switch out wiper blades and then went into the store, where I learned that wiper blades come in different sizes. Having no clue how long my current blades were, I went back out, searched in vain for the necessary specs in my user manual and then grabbed a rubbery piece that was about to fall off the old passenger blade.
Back inside the store, an employee asked me what I was looking for and then what size blade I needed.
My oh-so-intelligent reply? "I don't know. This size?" I said, holding up the strip of rubber.
That's when the employee started looking up my car and then went to grab, I believe, an 18" blade and a 20" one. That's when I learned that the passenger-side and driver-side blades are different lengths.
And as if that wasn't enough of a Flinn Scholar moment, you should've seen me out in the parking lot trying to get those old blades off my car. Because I had only skimmed the directions in the user manual, I spent a good long while pulling every which way except down (i.e., the right way) on one of the blades. After I reread the directions and realized my error, I also had some momentary problems figuring out how to get the new blade on.
But finally, after a long, epic and largely unneccessary battle, I had two new, functional wiper blades on my car. Of course, by that time it had quit raining in Beaumont, and it was dry sailing all the rest of the way into Ontario.
So after all that, I only used my new blades to wipe away the leftover rain as I set out and once or twice more to get rid of some mist kicked up by other cars on the few miles of still-wet freeway. But now I've got some new wiper blades and some newfound automotive shame, all of which will probably last for quite some time.