Update on the Car

We've had some progress on the car situation. A friend came over and jumped it. While he was here, he took a look at it and told Oliver the alternator still looks good (he knows a tad more about cars than we do). This was after Oliver pulled the battery out and found it had a lot of gunk built up on the terminals. He cleaned it off, then after it was going again, we let it run for awhile. It ran ok for a few drives, then died while Oliver was at work.

To make a long story short, we did learn we can buy car batteries in the store here. There was exactly one choice and it wasn't a perfect fit, but Oliver managed to get it in and working with a little creativity. It appears we'll have to replace the part that secures to the battery soon, but so far so good.

I'm really not surprised the battery is dead because about two years ago I took the car in for a major workup. The only thing outside of the usual fluids and such that they brought to my attention was the car battery. At the time, I wasn't sure if we were going to sell the car or not as our orders had yet to be decided, so I asked if it was nearing the end of life, or would last another year or so. He said as long as we weren't having problems, it should be ok. We weren't, so I went on my merry way.

I did worry about it some before we moved here, but the last time we took it in, the battery didn't come up as a concern so I stopped thinking about it. Clearly, we should have gone ahead and just replaced it, but you live, you learn. Hopefully, we can go back to using it without worry soon. We don't dare drive off base with it right now. If your car dies off-base, you are in trouble. There's no such thing as a tow truck company here.We also don't have a cell phone that works here, nor do most people.

For a picture to go with this post, I did some digging around in the photos I've taken over our time here. I have quite a few that are interesting, but haven't made it to the blog for one reason or another. (Mostly, because I take them, put them on the computer, then promptly forget them.) I found this one that seemed to relate a little and figured I'd share:

This is where we buy our gas. We have a little black key that fits into the pump and unlocks it. Our key is linked to an account, and every month we get a gas bill. It's kind of primitive, but reminds me of a backwoods gas station I used on a trip through Oregon during my college years. There were two pumps and they looked a lot like this one. At the time, I thought it was hilarious, but I am looking at it with new eyes, haha.