Adventures in crap breaking all around me

Last weekend was a weekend of failures.

Not my own failures (I'll have you know that February is my designated annual month of failures) but failures of my stuff.

I was driving home from poker on Saturday night at 1:50AM when I started to hear the sadly familiar thumping of a flat tire. It’s a sound you don’t hear often in life, but you always remember it vividly. A few seconds later, I wasn't just hearing it but feeling it. I was able to exit the highway near my home and called AAA. I figured I could change the tire myself but if there wasn’t a long delay in the tow truck’s arrival, why not have a professional do it? So I called and got the spare tire out and ready.

(One cool note: About ten minutes after I stopped, a policeman arrived and put up flares behind my vehicle. Awesome.)

Good thing I called in a professional. The lug nuts had been tightened by over-enthusiastic lug nut aficionados and it took the 300 pound tow truck guy using his huge lug-nut-turner plus me to get those things loose. No way I could have done it on my own. I wonder what he would have done had I been incapable of helping him?

All told, the adventure took about 90 minutes. I was really glad it happened when I was alone in the car rather than involving my whole family. And if Carol had been driving, I don’t know how the tow truck guy would have been able to remove the lug nuts.

If you have to have a flat tire (and I really wouldn’t recommend it), getting it in the early hours of Sunday morning in a safe area when the tow truck guys aren’t too busy, your family is safely at home, and traffic is light is certainly the best way.

(I would also like to note that I tend to have these car troubles en route to or en route from poker.)


Part II

As I woke late on Sunday morning, I thought my adventures were over. Turns out, I was wrong. Deadly wrong . . .

Okay, not deadly. But when you find your home suddenly without the incredible luxury of hot water, you suddenly realize how much you take for granted. Yes, those of us who live with modern plumbing are very spoiled compared to 99% of every single person who has ever lived.

A hot water heater is a pretty simple machine and there are only a few things that can go wrong. If it’s not working at all, it’s either a power issue or a thermostat issue. So, I went to Home Depot and bought a generic replacement thermostat. After some struggle, I got the old one out and the new one in. Still nothing. Hmm.

We have this gray box on top of our water heater that used to regulate power into our water heater and thus give us some credit from the power company. There is a metal wiring box connected below it and I opened it out of curiosity to be greeted by a burned and melted tangle of wires. I think I found the problem. After Carol made a quick call to Pepco, confirming that the device hadn’t been used for years and we could just remove it, I cut the burned wires and ditched the thing.

This left two wires coming out of the top of the water heater. I quickly surmised that these should be mated with the power cable coming out of the fuse box which had formerly been involved in the burned mess. I reconnected these and voila! Still nothing. Hmm.

In a clever move by Whirlpool, there is a schematic of the wiring on top of the water heater. I checked that and realized I had miswired one of the connections to the new thermostat. Once reconnected, I turned on the power and voila! Yes, this time it worked. Once again, hot water would flow in our home. I'm not sure whether it was the removal of the burned wires to a dead device or a failed thermostat that was the cause of the initial problem.

So, I got a lot done last weekend! Unfortunately, it was all stuff that wasn't broken before the start of last weekend. Bah.