Car Problems (and more games)

Cutter's Log - Stardate 1102.80.10
Current Song - One More Time (Daft Punk)

I'm having a problem with my car lately. It seems like every year something goes bad on it.

The car is a 1998 Pontiac Grand Am 4-door. I've had it for four years, and it is 13-and-a-half years old, when you include the time it was put together. When I bought it, the car had 117,000 miles. It has 173,000 on it (including one 3,000-mile round trip through the northeast).

It's hard to believe it's that old. In 25 years, my family is on its sixth family vehicle. Our '88 Ford Taurus lasted 10 years, and our '97 Plymouth Voyager lasted about another 10. Both had about less than half of the miles I had on mine when I bought it. So I'm going for a good two more years with this car before looking at another one.

Right now the car has some problems:

1. The right front wheel's stabilizer link is completely gone. I blame this on the poor construction of East Lincolnway in Sterling. It was refirbished with some very cheap asphalt about 10 years ago, and every winter there are large potholes that come up. They get sealed, and become eroded once more. I work on East Lincolnway, and that's Sterling's main business district.

My steering wheel was becoming shaky.

Anyway back to my car, I noticed my wheel was bent somewhere and I went over to a tire shop to get it fixed. When I left the bay, I drove for a while and the steering wheel was still shaking. Anyone's first thought would be to go back to the place I was at and tell them, "hey, wait a minute." I was on the other end of town when I just decided to go to the shop that fixed my drive axle last year, because it was close-by. That's when we looked under it and noticed the missing stabilizer link.

I was planning on going to a basketball game in Port Byron that night, and decided it wasn't worth risking it. (I will make up for that with 6 basketball games at the Rock Falls Shootout today).

2. New tires. Actually, my back tires are holding up real well. I have a place in mind that I can take my car to for this problem. I just need two new front ones.

3. Warped rotors. This comes from a habit of hard braking. I never considered it hard, but actually it really is. I was told that I shouldn't be recoiling in my seat when braking. For a big guy like myself, even a small recoil can do problems.

So great, another habit to try to break. I quit biting my nails a year ago after doing it for nearly 15 years. I just hope it doesn't take me that long to overcome this one.

4. No left-front turn light. I haven't had one for two years, when I smashed it against my dad's rear bumper one night. Since then I've had to stick my hand out and hand-signal the left turn.

I plan on getting that stabilizer link done on Monday morning. That way, hopefully I will have the car back for seeing games next week. The new tires and rotors I plan on getting done before taking a vacation in late March. The light fixture can wait, but only if I have any sort of financial windfall of a gain will I do something about it.

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In the next ten days, I plan on seeing about 12-15 basketball games. Still nowhere close to the Quest for 150, though. Italicized games are those I'm not covering for NISB.

1. Rock Falls boys (F/S) vs. Plano boys (F/S) - Saturday 11:00
2. Newman boys (F/S) vs. Seneca boys (F/S) - Saturday 1:30
3. Newman boys vs. Seneca boys - Saturday 3:00
4. DeKalb boys vs. East Peoria - Saturday 5:00
5. Bloomington boys vs. Hinsdale South - Saturday 6:30
6. Rock Falls boys vs. Byron - Saturday 8:30
7. Tuesday ???
8. Wednesday ???
9. Forreston boys vs. Freeport Aquin - Friday 1/14
10. Oregon boys vs. Rockford Lutheran - Saturday 1/15
11. Algonquin Jacobs boys vs. Normal West - Monday 1/17 (9:30)
12. Hononegah boys vs. DeKalb - Monday 11:00
13. Naperville Neuqua Valley vs. Normal Community - Monday 12:30
14. Antioch boys vs. Zion-Benton - Monday 2:00
(or, with apologies to both teams, lunch)
15. Normal vs. Jacobs - Monday 3:30
16. Zion-Benton vs. DeKalb - Monday 5:00
17. Hononegah vs. Neuqua Valley - Monday 6:30

On the F/S games, I simply do a small two-graf capsule on each game. Still, that is better than nothing. I try to give the sophomores some mention when I can.

Hope this holds up. Hope the car holds up.