A Day in the Life of an Elder – UC#1’s Adventure

Well, I think I mentioned earlier that, after spending most of my retirement fund on a new natural gas furnace / heat pump we noticed our 2013 Honda CRV exhibiting a death rattle when starting cold.

Actually, we noticed the sound a few years ago and the local Honda dealer replaced a belt or something and patted us on the head and said it would be fine. But last week when the local mechanic looked at it, he reported that a} it was a known problem since 2016 (the year before Honda looked at it and it could have been covered by warranty) and b) it was all detailed in Honda Service Bulletin 09-010. Unfortunately, the repair requires some specialized tools that he did not have.

So, I phoned the Honda dealer and after 5 tries, finally reached a real person in the service department. I explained the problem and he told me that Service Bulletins only apply to American built cars (go figure!) and that I couldn’t possibly know what was wrong until I paid them $199 for a diagnostic. I’m not sure if I completed the expletive before slamming the phone down. I hope he heard it.

So, I called the other Honda dealer and a very nice lady took the information, put me on hold for about 1 minute and then told me it would cost about $1200, but I would have to go on a wait list until the part came in. Fine, decent treatment.

But being a man of action, I started contacting other mechanics. One of them actually responded to the “contact us” section of their website, called me and gave me a competitive quote. We agreed that I would bring the car in on Thursday, but first I had to find a rental car for two days.

Now, trying to find a rental car when you live in a town that is 15 min from YEG (That’s Edmonton International Airport to you non-airplane-fanatics) is a real problem. You can drive to the airport and rent one, but that is a logistical nightmare. Flying to an airport and renting a car is easy, just go to the counter beside the luggage carousals. But driving??? Who drives to the airport to rent a car? You can’t park anywhere but somehow you have to get into the terminal to rent the car.

So, some searching brought me to Enterprise car rentals in Leduc. They actually cater to the truck rental business since Leduc is a big time oil town, but they have a small car rental office as well (the only such office in Leduc). And they were expecting a car to be returned just in time for us to rent it.

So, right after finishing my corn flakes for breakfast, we drove in to Enterprise, rented a Mitsubishi something-or-other, drove to the mechanic (also in Leduc), dropped off the CRV and headed back to Devon to buy groceries. We were expecting to have to pay for 2 days of rental car, but the mechanic got’er done by 4pm, so a quick trip back in, pick up the CRV and drop off the Mits.

The rental car had a slight problem which I reported to the nice man at the desk. The “door is open” alarm kept going off every time I started moving. I checked all 5 doors and the hood, but nothing was ajar. As compensation for my troubles, the nice man gave me a $25 discount on the rental (which amounted to 1/3 off).

Then we were off to our favorite Sushi restaurant to spend the discount on diner. Which is no longer my favorite because they changed the menu and no longer serve Bento boxes. [ed. note: we attempt to mitigate the dearth of bento below]

Not the best day of my life, but not the worst. And the sushi definitely did not taste like chicken.

– UC#1

The Leduc Public Library

UC#1 didn’t indicate if he had an opportunity to visit the Leduc Public Library, but I think he will be inspired to make a return trip.

Researching the Leduc Public Library caused the WLBOTT R&D team to be stuck in a Time Quake Loop for several hours due to:

But luckily we recovered, and were able to learn of a really delightful community library.

An Interesting History

Key take-aways:

When the library was founded in 1912, Leduc had a population of about 530
The library moved to a house on Main Street in 1947, with a monthly rent of $5.00
324 books were purchased for a total of $17.50
In 1951 it was decided by the library board to purchase an old street car, it was painted and contained 970 books. The Town Council thought the street car was an “eye sore” so they gave us space in their new town hall in 1956. – https://leduclibrary.ca/About-Us/Our-History