Take me to Trusty's

 

I started my first day as a mechanic a little too excited, thinking I could go into the junk yard without my own tools, knowing very well I would have came out with nothing if I did that. What initiated this specific occupation for me, was my semi-reckless off-roading adventure the weekend before I started grad school. Coming into a dirt packed incline at 8mph instead of 3mph and not taking the incline at the correct angle did a little bit of damage to my undercarriage. And by a little I mean the part that covers and protects your engine, or what a real mechanic (or amazon) would call the 'lower undercar engine shield', already had some damage to it and I made it worse...oops. The impact was a little rougher than I had anticipated. I took a good, clean chunk off of my radiator support, or should I say THE ONLY THING HOLDING MY RADIATOR IN PLACE!

Having the support of a handyman/mechanic with me at the time was helpful in the sense that I did not have to do the diagnosing myself, although after hours of research I probably could have gotten it figured out. Looking up the prices of the two parts I needed totaled to $753.97 without tax and shipping costs. That's when my handy dandy support said, "you can always try Trusty's!" With their experience in the junk yards within Ada and Canyon county, they said Trusty's would have the best and only selection of newer vehicles. And so we went. Not having a set of my own personal tools or the knowledge about picking and parting, I am glad I had someone with the expertise to remind me I couldn't go in without tools unless I wanted to be helpless, and although I was eager to get in there, forgetting the most important aspect of being a mechanic (tools) would not have gotten me far.

The junk yard has rules. Bring your own tools, wear closed toed shoes, and sign a waiver so they aren't responsible for your injuries or the car that crushed you. They provide you with a wheel barrow to carry your tools and a location of the vehicles you are looking for, but from there, you are on your own. They only had two vehicles that would possibly have the parts I needed. A 2013 and 2019 Hyundai Tucson. I own a 2017. My guess was that the 2013 would not have the correct fit and the 2019 may have been too new. My support told me the 2019 would probably be my best bet considering the generation of my car falls between 2016-2018. In a sense, my intuition was right. In the back 40 of the yard, I finally found the only two Tucson's they had.

This was the 2013. As you can tell, there is no longer an undercarriage, let alone anything left from the front of the vehicle.

This was the 2019. No engine shield, but the radiator support was there! I had hope, but my support told me the integrity of the support assembly was nonsufficient and I could not use it as a replacement. I thought to myself, "what a bust!", but it wasn't entirely. I came out with a new pulley for my cup holder in the back seat that one of my dogs decided to chew off. We will see how well I can salvage the stitching on the new one and not destroy my old one. I visited a few other junk yards, but good ol' Trusty's was the only one with the newer selection of vehicles. One junk yard had their forklift catch on fire, holding a vehicle in the air for intake. The whole situation was intriguing, but it worried me more than anything because the fuel to the fire was plentiful. There was fuel in the vehicle that was in the air, fuel in the forklift, and propane tanks too close for comfort. All in all, Trusty pick-a-part wasn't so trustworthy after all, and a class A fire extinguisher was not going to put out that fire.

As I look back at my first experience of learning how to be a mechanic, I can place the experience on the continuum of self vs. society. It falls slightly farther on the side of self. The experience was not completely out of my knowledge range considering I knew how to use certain commonly used tools, but I gained a lot of knowledge through this first experience as a new occupation by learning insights, and tips and tricks from someone who has already had the experience and exposure to the environment. I was able to widen my horizons through thinking in different ways and taking things into consideration I otherwise wouldn't have. My ability to take on a new occupation and be guided through it has given me the opportunity to listen to the one with experience and be open-minded about a mechanical task that I may have had an idea about, but the idea didn't make sense logically. This experience will be the first of many that will contribute to many aspects of my life, including but not limited to, my creativity in the field, my gratefulness for those who have been educated in this field to fix, prevent, and repair a vesicle that gets people from point A to point B, my mindfulness while driving, my safety, my physical capabilities, my ability to learn, and so much more.

My thought that learning how to mechanic was going to be somewhere near my realm of knowledge because I have handled tools previously was pretty naïve. There were many instances where I would ask a question that I thought I already had the answer to because I calculated it out in my brain that way, but what I realized was that I was not looking at other details of the situation that could have negatively impacted my experience. The only real meditative thoughts that went through my mind were the ones about feeling like these experiences are going to contribute to my independence and ability to apply learned skills to other aspects of my life. Throughout my experiences of learning how to mechanic, I see my calculative thinking processes gearing (no pun intended) more towards meditative thinking in the context of asking myself why I have the curiosity, how the thought is effective, and if the thought has meaning behind it.

Now I am thinking about changing my blog name to 'The Meditative Mediocre Mechanic'. Too late.