This weekend just gone, I took the Steem-Mobile on a lengthy (by my standards) - trip. A friend was due to turn 21, and I had been given a summons, a room, and the task of obtaining a gift as is the tradition on such ocassions.
In preparation of this journey, I ensured my tyres were in excellent condition, inflated, aligned, and balanced. It would be a ~240KM trek just to get there.
The journey was uneventful, if by uneventful you can recount the moments where a straying Mazda CX-7 attempted a nearly fatal overtaking manoeuvre involving a road train about seven hundred metres forward of the position where I was driving, minding my own business as the tyres roared at 110 kilometres per hour.
Natural selection did not prove to be successful on this ocassion, and the metal panels of the vehicle remained untwisted. A truck driver left some rubber on the road due to their swift braking action.
Most of the trip was on a solitary road, and even more of it dead straight. The only reason to slow down along the way was to carefully assess the level of safety prior to overtaking slower moving vehicles, and turn off the highway toward my destination.
I arrived at the party. Everyone talked. People met. People ate. People drank. People rambled, people smiled. No one cried. All up, a good party.
The following morning, following breakfast, I set out again, to head on home, in the opposite direction.
As is the sensible thing to do, when driving long distances on country roads in Australia, you drive with your headlights on, even if it is during daylight hours. This helps increase visibility of your vehicle to other drivers.
Along the way, about twnety kilometres out of a rest stop, a message flashed across my dashboard. "Headlamp Fault."
I grimace slightly. I haven't changed headlamps on my car before. An hour and a half later, after confirming the fault, I arrived in the vicinity of home, and stopped in at the nearest "car-supply" store.
I consulted the manual, and proceeded to purchase the wrong lights. Luckily, the guy working at the shop was able to correct this error, and exchange the wrong bulbs for the right ones. It was a comedy of errors, as the instruction manual, and the error message gave conflicting specifications for the type of bulb that was required.
A screw driver later, and the removal of an entire headlight assembly (and lots of struggle with the rubber seals, switches, and wiring looms) - the globes were finally altered.
These are not the sorts of things that you expect to go wrong, but it is important to be able to complete manual repairs such as this, without throwing your money at "qualified" individuals - all they do is read the exact same instruction manual as you.
Sure, they might have done it a few more times than you - but you never know when you might have the opportunity to help someone out with a task like this.
At least I will be able to see when I go driving at night.
Plus, no one wants to be bothered by the Police when they've only got one headlamp functioning on their car.
The Steem Mobile was not harmed in the making of this post.