I made the drive home from the airport sound like everything was fine. Most of the important things were, but there was a bit of noise coming from my brakes. Nothing big but certainly persistent. Over the next week the noise grew, getting louder and more insistent and the braking getting less smooth. Even I knew how to diagnose this, though: my brake pads were almost worn out. Or calipers, maybe. Doesn't matter; they're basically a set. When they're close to wearing out, they start making --- they're supposed to start making --- a noise too irritating to ignore, which encourages the car owner to get the thing fixed before it becomes unsafe to operate.
This was mostly just wear, as I've had the car for closing in on 50,000 miles and the car itself is well over 100,000 miles old. It's possibly hurried by the extreme emergency stop we had to make on the way to Detroit airport, but that would be only hurried rather than caused. Anyway, a trip to the dealer, the discovery they couldn't deal with it at the after-office-hours appointment I had, and my own trip by bus and the next morning my car was fine.
Except. Something started making a terrible racket in my suspension, something hard to miss over the course of a road trip covering suspiciously close to 1600 miles and you're going to read about every one of them. Usually when I was at low speed, reliably when I was braking or going over a pothole, and our particular street is nothing but potholes. I had to chalk it up to the suspension, annoyingly, being as old as the brake pads and dying at almost but not quite the same time, and brought the car in yesterday after work for them to examine.
They figured to have a diagnosis by about 5:30 and if they were lucky get it done by their 8 pm close. No luck and they texted that it they would need the morning to diagnose it. Either the problem was awful or they were swamped. This morning they didn't have any message for me and finally I texted them about noon to ask if there was word. They were still working on it but hoped to have an answer soon.
Finally the answer: it looks like a bit of road debris got into a shield near the suspension, which was causing the trouble. And I suppose its natural movement might explain why the low-speed groaning stopped this past weekend, though the pothole and braking noise kept going. Must have shaken loose. But they got it and cleaned it out, and what's left looks good.
Of course, as I write this, I haven't driven it yet so who knows what's next ...
In pictures, now, what's next is a bit more Cedar Point during the no-longer-bonus weekend that's before Halloweekends but after Ordinary Time.
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bunnyhugger discovering that while the Kettle Corn place was set up, it wasn't running. We would never see it open that fall. But coffee was open and she would get coffee at least.
The chickens are on the prowl!
``You coming, Mabel? C'mon, time's a-wasting!''
And then bunnyhugger noticed trouble approaching, and started whistling that theme from West Side Story.
``You're just lucky my chick's here!''
Although Halloweekends hadn't started yet there was a group lined up at one of the haunted house areas, next to the petting zoo, and the door opened up to let people in. So I got this view of what might be inside which looks like a 50s-ish diner?
Trivia: Chinese is the only script to still be primarily used for the language it was originally developed for. Source: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World In Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 66: Uranium Hunter or the Living Geiger Counter, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. The living Geiger counter is a creature named the Beekl-Bokl and it looks kind of like ``What if Eugene the Jeep were a bunny-tailed platypus?'' (he glows and ticks when detecting radioactivity).
