“You’ll get to see a clutch in real life!”

I know nothing about cars.  The D stands for Drive and such.  But my friend knows a ton about cars, so when he invited me to go help him “reinstall a transmission in a car,” I thought it would be a pretty interesting experience. 

It sure was. 

When we got there, we (note: whenever I use the word “we,” I’m mainly referring to Cody and Gary.  My jobs were pretty much limited to loosening and tightening of bolts and other similarly vital aspects of car maintenance) were at the halfway point.  Cody had already been there several times that week taking apart the car so we had to exchange parts and then put everything back together.  He warned me in advance that it would be a 6 or 7 hour job, so I was pretty prepared for a long day, especially since I knew nothing about cars. 

 Cody and Gary with the transmission.  and clutch?

Cody, Gary, Meredith, and I with the pressure plate and other thing. (I almost impressed you with my car jargon huh?)

We were putting back all the pieces and everyone was getting really exciting.  It was that same atmosphere when we were going down Timp, where you feel like you’re almost done but cognitively, you know there’s still hours of work left. 

See, look how excited Cody is!

    

And then the gears dropped.  I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but it was bad.  Bad enough that we spent the next couple hours trying to figure out how to solve that problem. 

And we didn’t.

What a bummer that the only thing Cody didn’t know every possible detail of in a car was the gear box.  When they described it to me, it sounded scary, and everyone they called told them to “not open the gear box whatever possible,” which was a problem since the only way to fix it would be to open the gear box.

So, after 6 hours, we ended at the halfway point!

It was all very interesting and I got to see a lot of things that I probably never would have seen otherwise, so that was really cool.  I had a lot of fun, and never got bored, even though it lasted all day.

Good thing I’ve seen something complicated done in a car that I’ll probably never have to worry about, but I still don’t know how to change oil or rotate tires.  :)

And because I want you to see just how dirty I got…