A Summer With No Air

Commitment, Sweat & Spite all rolled into one

problem

solution

	memphis in the summer			find $1100 dollars in some old jeans
	a cracked compressor in my F-150 truck			make www.richardvining.com a pay site
	price gouging			take the MATA
	the phrase "out of warranty"
	did i mention memphis in the summer ?

while still a work in progress (i need to sweat this out until october to truly call this a "success") this is perhaps the greatest achievment of all time!

back in may 2K2, when the temp hit a balmy 76 degrees, i decided to turn the ole air on in my 1998 model F-150 pickup. while it took a few minutes for me to notice, not much was happening in the way of thermal reduction. in fact, it was actually getting a little warmer inside the cab. thinking that i must have a dial wrong or something, i begin to fiddle around with all the controls. after a few minutes, panic begins to set in. at one point i even changed the radio from FM to AM... just in case. so, at a loss for what to do i pull over and decide to "CTRL-ALT-Delete" the car by turning it off and back on. when that didn't work i knew that my freon or something must be low. "bummer, that stuff is like 80 bucks a can or something" i thought to myself. but hey, what else ya gonna do? it was right then that this story took on a life of it's own.

the sign

the sign is located along mt. moriah not far from where east end skating rink used to be. when i saw it, i immediately cut accross 2 lanes and pulled into bay #1. the fella inside asked if he could help me so i pointed to the sign and said "my air blows hot so i stopped here".

from there i gave him the keys and went to lunch. when i got back the dude gave me a "good news / bad news" scenario. the good news was that my A/C no longer blows hot. the bad news was that it would only do so on $110 dollars worth of coolant for about 8 minutes due to a crack in my compressor. his estimate to fix that almost made refilling with coolant every 8 minutes for $110 bucks make sense.

anyway, i told the guy that i'd just tough it out for now. that is when he cracked back on me with a "ohh, tough it out will ya... you'll be back!"

for some reason, that comment really rubbed me the wrong way and injected just the right amount of spite into this saga that has fueled my determination during these long summer months.


however, even with ample amounts of motivation a fella has got to have some help. by mid june the novelty had worn completely off. even though i'd been bragging to everyone about how i'm gonna make it all summer without A/C, i needed some relief.

that is when i went to autozone, threw down $6 bucks (american) and purchased the "mighty monsoon"!

the "mighty monsoon" is a cigarette lighter powered fan with foam blades. it even has a place to pour in your favorate scent so it can serve as an air freshner as well.

this thing really helps out when you are stuck in traffic and aren't getting any airflow from the outside.

with my morale refreshed by the gentle winds for the "mighty monsoon", i could actually see myself making it not only this summer, but perhaps next summer as well. however, by mid july reality began to set in. its HOT!

the situation was becoming so desperate that at one point i even turned on the A/C just to see if the compressor had "fixed itself" or something. when that didn't work (duhh) i started to look for other ways to boost morale and restore my motivation.

so i decided to head back to the source by paying my friend @ the "multi tune & tire" a visit. before i had even turned my truck off he was out in the lot to greet me.

"i told you you'd be back" he spouted off. i just smiled and showed him my fan and said "see this, $6 bucks! and i'm gonna make it the rest of the summer"

i could tell that he was a little confused, so he shook his head and asked if there was anything he could do for me. i said "no" and drove off. his "i told you so" attitude was all i needed to get me thru the rest of the summer.

a few days later my wife noticed that i had and "unusual" tan workin. my left arm was significantly darker than my right. it is like having a sock tan on your whole arm. after thinking about it for a second i realized it was caused by having my arm out the window all the time. rather than put spf 10 on my left arm and spf 4 on my right to balance things out, i've made it a point to try and soak up all the rays i can on the left arm. it's kind of a visual reminder that keeps me focused on the task @ hand here with only a few more weeks to go.

by my calculations, i should be in the clear by the second week of october. i'd say the end of september, but on a hunch, which has since been backed up with extensive research (plese visit the offical NOAA data in your free time) shows that the weather inside my airless F-150 cocoon is consistanly 15 to 20 degrees warmer than the weather outside the truck. to test this theory i took my trusty radio shack thermometer and mounted it on the cup holder of my truck. on september 4th the outside temp was 94 degrees at lunch - a typical summer day in memphis. however, with the windows down and the mighty monsoon on the fritz (i think it overheated), the temp hit an all time high while sitting in a construction zone on poplar. in the picture on the right, you can see that the interior of the truck reached 119.9 degrees fahrenheit (not sure what the conversion into kelvin is) ... but hey, @ 51% humidity "it's a dry heat!"

anyway, by mid-october the temp during my primary driving times (to and from work) should be quite nice barring any major meteorological events. by then i estimate the interior temp to be in the mid to low 90's, which is quite nice if you have a breeze and some cool tunes jammin in the background.

however, with the actual end date sort of up in the "air" so to speak, total victory cannot be declared until i have to actually turn the heat on. be sure to check back with www.richardvining.com soon as so not to miss out that historic press conference.

update 10.14.02

VICTORY!

summer declares... "i give up, that richard guy is just too stubborn"

the above graphic was taken from the weather channel's offical forecast for the 38104 area code.

as you can see, at no point during the next 10 days does the high temp ever exceed room temperature.

A Summer With No Air

Commitment, Sweat & Spite all rolled into one

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