Hyder, AK
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319,000 miles and counting
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The Blue Bubble
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Alternator 7431-076522166 A Love Story
On a cold night between Oxnard and Agoura Hills, the unthinkable happened. The ambitions of the trusty little gray magnetic machine, labeled Alternator 7431-076522166, began to fade and falter.
The cursed idiot light, the red glowing symbol of a battery, made its first appearance at the 295,233 odometer mark.
The goal of Alternator 7431-076522166 was to live to see 300,000 miles. The moment couldn’t be more desperate. The battery kept the car alive until it reached the Reyes Adobe Road exit in Agoura Hills.
The VW, known as “The Blue Bubble,” was in trouble.
The battery, its life draining from it mile by mile, yard by yard, inch by inch, gave its all and suffered a similar fate as its friend, the now motionless machine that once robustly used a rotating magnetic field to produce alternating current to power all electrical functions in the internal combustion vehicle it was assigned to in 1998.
The bi-polar electrical storage device couldn’t go on anymore, causing the power steering to give up its duties, and the power train to choo choo for the last time.
In the darkness of night, the car rolled to a foreboding, portentous, calamitous, and disastrous stop. The air was cold. The wind whipped gently around the body of the aged car now frozen in place on this driveway near the deserted 101 Freeway offramp.
The traffic lights 75 yards away spoke their indifference to this tragic moment by their casual, insouciant, and blithe unconcern for the moment that just passed.
Blink green. Blink yellow. Blink red.
No empathetic refrain was harkened for their electrical cousin, now dead and now cold forever, disconnected from the purpose it had marveled in fortuitous fortune for the fortune of the two of us for the past 16 years.
In tribute, the hood was raised. For a few moments, a silence followed from the natural sonic rhythm the night once bellowed just moments before.
As if saying this moment could not be true, the night ghosts spoke their discontent by ending all night sounds for at least five seconds in sacred tribute to the small part with the big heart that gave it all. Or that’s when my fingers were in my ears while stretching.
Nothing could be done. All that was left was to call the people at AAA who made connections with the people who own and operate the conveyance mechanism known as a tow truck.
The man showed up precisely when he was going to be there. Young and portly, the man in the blue and gray garage overalls was kind.
As if his iPod was playing a dirge, he slowly and somberly lifted the tires into their metal claws and then lifted the front end of The Blue Bubble into place behind his torrid truck of reckoning.
No words could express the sadness of this moment, so the man talked about baseball and hockey and why its hard to market a sports team with the name Anaheim.
The journey to Anaheim was marked by passive resistance of traffic stalls and starts through Los Angeles, making this funeral procession for the kind and gentle electrical generator a horrid lesson in mobility futility.
Could the car gods be more cruel? Why should we suffer more? The inability of this magnetic transformer to help find its way home convened our attention on one question.
Could there be a worse fate? Yes. Driving the tow truck. Anaheim was a far distant land.
Once in Anaheim, Dave The Mechanic, a tall middle-aged man with a wise visage, took control of the situation. He filled out the necessary paperwork and entered the information into the computer.
To honor this noble part, my sense of duty and respect called my consciousness into action. It didn’t stop to text. “Dave, could you give the part to me, so it can receive a proper burial?”
He bowed his head. He knew the news wouldn’t set well. “No,” he said. “We have to turn this part in. It has to be recycled.”
Recycled? Suddenly, the circle of life gave me hope. Yes. Recycled, similar to the concept of reincarnation.
Imagine.
Someday this part that had been an integral part of two engines, and had traveled to 48 states and traversed the country from Key West, Florida to Hyder, Alaska could be rebuilt to power another car to amazing adventures.
Still, the sadness circumvented this celebration of revelation. Yes, the alternator had lived a long life. And it had seen its friends, the radiator, the water pump, the cooling plates, the air compressor, the clutch, the window mechanisms, and its close friend, the alternator bracket, all part company abruptly for the junk yard, sometimes without saying goodbye.
Part of the curse of functioning so long is seeing your friends be removed one by one, until its just you with a bunch of rookie parts who think they know everything about the internal combustion engine.
Think again.
The alternator is gone now. The Blue Bubble is back on the road with a new Bosch alternator and battery.
However, from this day on, let it be known that anytime it passes Reyes Adobe Road in Agoura Hills, it will dim its lights in recognition of the sacrifice that little gray electromagnetic wonder made for our simple pleasure of travel.
If you have the inclination, please dim your lights in tribute too.
And hopefully, a kind and caring machinist will rebuild the wonderful part we will miss so very much.
And we will also take heart. We may not make it to 300,000 miles, or the end of this story, but all of us are plugged into something good and generating energy for the good of the whole.
You can call it love or Alternator 7431-076522166.
© Tim Jones 2015