An ode to an old car: 93 Volvo 940

Recently, I had to retire my beloved old car, Svetlana or Svetty for short. She was a 1993 Volvo 940, so while not one of the sexier, i.e. turbo-charged, of the bunch she got me around for over 14 years. People love their Turbos, and for good reason- my gal was equipped with a 4-cylinder engine to carry her 4,000-ish pound body, which translated to an underwhelming acceleration up long inclines, but smooth and comfortable coasting on freeways, once she got up to speed.  I could get her going quite fast, considering- close to 100 MPH, and she easily handled the long stretches of 70-mph roads spanning much of the desert and rural areas. To be honest, I'm a bit of a cautious driver and have been for a long time, though the accident that caused me to lose Svetty has only increased that trepidation I've felt since. 

Given that the average age of the cars on American roads is about 11 years, and most people only keep their cars for an average of about 6 years, I'd gone well above and beyond that with my old gal. She kept driving, even past 200,000 miles, and she was comfortable. I drove her throughout college, and when I traveled to Japan my family kept the car running so that I could drive her upon returning- a nice familiarity after some reverse-culture shock and the challenges of readjusting to life in the US of A. She'd driven from Vegas to Seattle, then back up North, along with many other shorter road trips throughout the nearby regions.  I'd gotten a lot of work done on her to keep her going, too: replaced the transmission, had an after-market stereo system with Bluetooth and new speakers installed, replaced the fuel pump, her starter, multiple batteries, radiators, countless hoses, wires, lights, and more. These things happen, and general maintenance is always going to be required to keep an older vehicle moving, but she sure did, up until she didn't. 

And really, even after the accident, she would start and drive- but the battery had been cracked and was leaking battery acid all over, so I was worried about the potential for electrical fires or other issues arising. She probably could have been saved, had I the knowledge or skills needed to do the bodywork, or the money available to pay someone else for it. Alas, I lack the skills and the funds, and as much as I love the old girl (and still do), the accident was really traumatic for me and I wasn't sure I'd ever feel quite the same driving her, even if I did sink in the cost of the extensive repairs and had her thoroughly rebuilt. I opted to let her go, with much grief and extensive mourning. Not only was I losing a reliable companion of over a decade, but it had been just as long since I'd entered the intimidating and frustrating world of car-buying. Maybe it's less frustrating for people with excellent credit and cushy bank accounts, but in my initial search I spent over $500 on getting different cars inspected only to learn the mechanic would advise against committing to any of them. I found a 1981 Volvo 242 or so that was absolutely adorable, but it had its own cast of challenges given its age and condition. It took a couple of months of searching and looking into different financing options before we finally landed on my new ride, who is similar to Svetty in being of European make, blocky, and white, so the familiarity helps ease the transition pains. As much as I adored my Svetty, there are things to be said for the advancements of technology over the last 26 or so years, like additional airbags, inbuilt Bluetooth, anti-lock brakes, and other safety features. 

Even so, I'm going to miss the old gal. She got me where I needed to go, more often than not, for many, many years. Despite all the changes life throws at us in the course of 14 years, she remained a stalwart and steadfast friend. Even in her final moments, she kept me safe and shielded from the force of a Toyota Sienna trying to coexist in the same space as me, allowing me to walk away unharmed, and for that I will be forever grateful.

You're a good girl, Svetty. 

Thanks for everything. 

💖

XOXO,

NAU

Vegas: The family wheels

upon a time, when I was still just a wee young little version of the human I am today, I lived in my grandpa's house with a few other family members. It was the hub of the relatives, and every holiday season the extended branches would return to the root and have a massive feast together. It was a large family, so there were many different personalities that could lead to arguments over dinner, but for the most part, it was a jovial and merry time... but after my great old grandpa passed on after an extended battle with illness, the siblings devolved into in-fighting and drifted apart with the years. The family house was sold, grandpa's car driven off to another state, and life went on. Given that I spent many of my formative years living in his house, I was quite close to my grandfather and losing him hurt pretty badly. Sure, I was adopted into the family, and always kind of felt a bit like an outsider (I was the only one in the family with both brown hair and brown eyes, so I was the brunette sheep of the clan) but grandpa? He never let that be the case for long. When my parents would fight, he'd let me take shelter in his room and offer me a cream soda from his private stash, and ensure I got a gift at Christmas. He helped me purchase the car I still have to this day. When it came to my education, he was my biggest champion and encouraged me to get good grades and push to learn more. Life isn't perfect, and neither was he, but he left a strong impression on me as a kid and I credit him for inspiring me to achieve some of the more difficult things I've managed in my life. 

Somewhere down the road, quite literally, my grandpa's car found it's way back to me. Unfortunately, after being driven off by my Uncle (who had, at the time, decried me too irresponsible for the vehicle), things had taken a dire turn for the worse. We were given the car for free, which was exceptionally nice of my aunt to do after sinking her own money into trying to get the car operational again, but we quickly found that she was still inoperable. We made it less than a full block before plumes of steam were wafting out from under the hood, and the transmission completely failed to react. I've no clue what exactly happened to the poor old girl, but she had hardly any miles on her. The Volvo I had prior to my grandpa's passing, however, is nearing 200,000 miles on her original transmission and only recently had her first issues, so I'm pleased to know my uncle's appraisal of my vehicular responsibility was incorrect and the judgment misplaced. 

So these photos serve as a bit of a time capsule. My grandfather drove me to eat chicken fried steak for breakfast in this car when I was just an adolescent, and while it hurt to see it go, we couldn't afford to fix the extent of issues she'd developed. We sold her to a mechanic, so hopefully she's been rebuilt and is on the road again, but I'll always have these photos to preserve the memory. 

Thanks for everything, grandpa. 💖

💙

XOXO,

NAU

Vegas: Firefighters

What do you do when your engine catches fire?!

Well, ideally, you find a safe place to pull over and call the emergency services... In this case, that's what the unfortunate driver of this flaming vehicle had to do. While, thankfully, I've never personally experienced my engine bursting into flames, I have had to deal with it overheating on the regular thanks to Las Vegas's supremely unforgiving summer temperatures. While it's not as hot as the surface of the sun, or Death Valley (doesn't the name say it all, though?), it's hot enough to do some real damage when it's peak summer temperatures out. Given that most vehicles on the road these days are combustion engines, there's a lot of flammable liquids under high pressure and a lot of room for things to go wrong. The car involved here was probably not going to be salvageable to drive due to the extent of the damages, but at least it didn't escalate into a larger fire. Never underestimate the threat of a well-fed fire, or the danger of any fire, really. Las Vegas is a desert and the environment extremely dry, so it doesn't take much of a spark to ignite an inferno.

I don't know about you, but I'm definitely grateful for the firefighters and other emergency personnel that put their lives on the line to save ours. It's not always a glamorous job- sometimes the Las Vegas Fire Department has to roll out to extinguish a flaming shopping cart, or to help someone who's fallen at a casino after over-indulging in the free booze offered throughout the gaming areas to anyone playing. And emergencies can happen at any time of day, too- so there's no rest for the weary. They might stop to grab a quick bite to eat and before their food is ready be called out again, leaving behind their meal and their money. Like I said, I'm grateful for the work they do. I don't know that I'm cut out for it, but my maternal grandpa was an EMT later in life after being inspired by those who saved his life during a heart attack, so I guess he instilled that appreciation into me young. 

Seeing them in action is a good reminder of the service they provide our communities!

Oregon: Morning in Merril

After another night curled up in our vehicles, this time the two of us shivering a little in my Volvo, we unfurled ourselves in the warming sunlight to a bright, fresh new morning in Merrill, Oregon. Mount Hood glistened in the distance, and the bright green leaves were practically glowing in the early morning dew. We couldn't help but explore the area and scope out a nearby grassy field full of mushrooms! I know, mushrooms might not be that big of a deal to most people, after all, they're generally harbingers of rot and decay, right? But for us, they're absolutely fascinating! I've long been intrigued by mushrooms and the field of mycology, but the desert isn't exactly an environment prone to fostering a plethora of fungal varietals.  We found several different fungi popping up in the field, but we're not educated enough to identify them in the wild like that, plus the sheer variety and volume of fungal forms makes it a daunting task even for the well-educated shroom-hunter. 

After whetting our curiosity in the field, and growing more awkwardly uncomfortable as we gained the awareness that we may have been exploring in an actively watched school field, we headed back to the vehicles. Antho ended up making friends with a woman who, quite literally, popped up out of the bushes while he was taking photos. When a local patrol officer rolled into the same parking lot, our mystery friend laughed and greeted him, informing us that there were only two cops for the entire town, and this one was Brian. Our single serving friendly eagerly told us we needed to swing on down to Medford to take advantage of some of those legendary cheap weed deals that legal weed had brought to Oregon before venturing off. As enticing as that offer was, we were more concerned with making it from Southern Oregon to North-Western Washington, ideally before the day was done. That meant a lot of roads to cover yet! I made a quick jaunt to the local market, where I encountered our mysterious friend enthusiastically discussing pregnancy (and a failing bladder caused by pregnancy) with a very-far-along and visably uncomfortable shop-girl, as I paid for our brunches and coffee. 

Freshly stretched, caffeinated, with snacks and rodents packed and ready, we started to hit the road. Started to, anyway. I didn't make it far at all- literally a block or two at most- before I had to call it and pull over. Despite taking my old grumpy girl to a shop in Vegas and throwing more than $600 at repairs, they hadn't actually addressed the transmission problems (refusal to reverse, on-going leak, etc) I had specifically taken her in for. Given her leak, and the fact the shop had happily informed me "she was just low on fluids", we figured the best option was to check her levels, top her off, and try her out. Since we ended up pulling over in a residential neighborhood, we had to park in front of a home... We were quite surprised when within moments of killing our engines a slight young woman popped out of the house nearest us to inquire if we were alright and ask if we needed help. After talking, we learned her name was Diana, and Diana was such a sweetheart! She called up her roommate, who coincidentally works on big trucks, to see if he could help us any but he was still several hours away yet. We thanked her for her concern, and politely declined her offers to feed us, not wanting to be any trouble. I had transmission fluid I'd picked up at one of our previous stops in Reno, but given how quickly I'd needed it after leaving Vegas, I made sure to make it a priority to get more as soon as we hit Eugene, just to be safe. 

Olliver, my co-pilot, was only bothered by the intensity of the sunlight infiltrating his cage, interrupting his nap. Once we had poured a bunch of fluid back into my thirsty old girl, checked her levels again, and let her run for a minute, we tentatively decided to go for it. We'd made it this far, after all, so why quit now? We were on the final leg of our cross-country run, and if we could make it to Seattle we'd be home. Home at last.  

And wouldn't you know it... it worked. Freshly hydrated, Svetty roared back onto the road with all the fury of a Valkyrie.  Onward and upward!

To Valhalla!!!!

Korea: Gwangjang lights

It's been some time since I dedicated an actual post in and of itself to my time in South Korea, and after unearthing a treasure trove of photos I hadn't even gotten to processing yet, I dove in deep and found lots of material worthy of sharing on this here blog, so if you've been missing the Korea posts you're in luck. I seem to have a propensity towards taking few photos early in my time abroad, whether it was my move to Japan (where I also made a conscious decision to go without a cell phone for the first 6 months, which contributed to that lack of photos) or during the move to Korea... towards the end of my stays, though, the finality of it starts to seep in and I find myself growing more frenetic in my efforts to snap visual reminders of the experience for conservation, like the mad dash to check off the bucket-list when an impending sense of mortality settles in sometime around middle age. Memory is a tricky and fickle thing, so I always find it far preferable to try to capture things in a very literal photographic sense, trying to seal a singular moment in time in pixel form for eternal preservation. 

And I have to admit, there's something surreal about Seoul at night, especially looking back through the haze of nostalgia. Maybe it's all the glittering neon and LED lights fiercely defying the creeping darkness, or the billowing plumes of steam tumbling from the nearest damp place, whether it's a steaming pan of tteokbokkie at a street side food stand or a manhole cover concealing subterranean secrets. I hope these photos can convey a bit of that sense to you, the reader. Whether it's the perplexing button configuration on the elevator I rode, day in, day out, or the color-changing tunnels at Gwangjang market. It's all a bit sci-fi, isn't it? Or maybe that's just me, getting lost in the uncanny valley. Neon, after all, reminds me a bit of home, the bedazzled Las Vegas strip beaming away at night like an angler fish trying to lure in prey. Maybe Seoul has more in common with home than I thought...  

Las Vegas: Fuel pump replacement with YourMechanic 2015/09/15

As is prone to happening in life, sometimes even our most reliable of things let us down from time to time. 

My car, Svetty, is an old dame. 

She runs exceptionally well most of the time, but this past summer she's begun experiencing an ongoing procession of hiccups and age related problems that has resulted in several costly replacement part installations. Between batteries, spark plugs, cables, hoses, and now a fuel pump, she's gobbled up a good portion of my finances. It's all well worth it to me in the end if I can get my old car up and running again, as I genuinely aim to keep her until she falls to pieces. Ideally I'd like to get her into the million mile club, but to get there I'm going to have to overcome obstacles like this from time to time. It's all part of the process. 

As she was incapable of driving, I ended up going with YourMechanic for the repairs as they were a mobile mechanic company that could diagnose and repair issues without having to leave your home. My mechanic, Patrick, was exceptionally pleasant and didn't mind my hanging around watching, photographing or asking questions throughout the process.