Nine years ago, the trophy wife and I surfed the
internet and bought a used BMW.
It was located in Texas, so we had it shipped
to my veterinary clinic here in Montana.
Once in our garage, we carefully inspected
our sight-unseen purchase, but unlike ordering a hot
Russian bride off the internet, everything appeared
to be exactly as represented on e-bay.
That wasn’t the stupid part.
Over the next nine years, the car proved to be
thrifty and reliable if you didn’t count the cost of
breakdowns, nor the times we were left stranded.
It is a zippy little car having awarded us
three speeding tickets; two for me and one for the
trophy wife.
My first was on the interstate outside of
Hardin, Montana, with my second on Main Street in
Jackpot, Nevada.
Druann’s infraction occurred in Yellowstone
National Park where I tried to talk our way out of
the ticket by telling the officer, “Thanks for
pulling us over.
I’ve been telling her to slow down for the
last two hours, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
This did not appear to help either our
citation problem or strengthen our marital
relationship, so we don’t talk about it anymore.
Forget I mentioned it, but that wasn’t the
stupid part.
Last week the starter failed on the old BMW.
It has 208,000 miles and on the bright side,
the starter died in our garage giving the false
impression we would at least save the cost of a tow
truck for this repair.
Such was not the case.
BMWs are designed by sadistic, trust-funder
engineers who don’t even own a crescent wrench.
Fixing anything requires a shop full of
specialty tools plus a mechanic with more free time
on his hands than a food-stamper during the Obama
years.
After a long internet search, I found where
engineers actually hid the dang starter, plus a
pictorial on how to fix it yourself in seven easy
hours.
Because it would take three hours load the car on my
flatbed and haul it to Billings, I decided to
replace the starter myself.
Even that wasn’t the stupid part.
After four hours, I finally had my dead
starter in my mangled hands having knocked the hide
off most my knuckles struggling with odd shaped
bolts hidden in the darkest holes of my car.
I considered soliciting the aid of the trophy
wife with her smaller hands before deciding BMW is
the acronym for Bavarian Midget Werks; a company
where twisted engineers design cars to be built by
miniature mechanics.
Four hours and two units of blood later the
new starter was in, so I hopped in the driver’s
seat, hit the ignition and heard “click, click,
click!” Exasperated, I called Jerry at the Metric
Wrench in Billings and explained my problem.
“Did you test the new starter before you
installed it?” He asked.
“We always ground test these starters which
are a bugger to get to.”
I slowly banged my head on the table
realizing I might have just installed a defective
new starter thereby sentencing myself to another
eight hours in BMW hell.
I called for
a tow truck, pushed the car out of my garage and
sent her to Jerry, but even this is not the stupid
part.
I am spoke at the Independent Beef Association of
North Dakota / US Cattlemen’s Association annual
meeting in Bismarck last Saturday, so being
BMW-less, I rented a car from Enterprise.
While booking the car online, I learned
customers fully indoctrinated into feeling guilty
about being human can pay an additional $2.50 for
Carbon Credits, thus rendering their car rental
carbon neutral.
In spite of recent published data proving
man-made climate change is clearly a man-made hoax,
there are still leftists who buy the credits to
bolster their self-esteem.
This is the stupid part and even worse, those
people vote.
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