Today Garry went off to Dnepro to help Victor build a mudroom-entry on the front of his house. Victor had poured cement for the floor a couple weeks ago. Garry took off after feeding the cows this morning (and laying out his feed bin project upstairs in the haymow, so he could order the metal to line it) while Maxim went out to finish plowing. The boys and I worked on the biology test review - they are memorizing the muscles in the human body for tommorrow's test.
So I talked to Garry around 4 pm and he said he was leaving soon, as the walls were up and the roof was made but Denis and Daniel had not come home to help lift it so they would finish on Saturday- the aspenite (chipboard) could get nailed on then.
So around 5 o'clock he called to say he would be on his way soon (Max had just come in to shower after doing the afternoon feeding) The delay was caused by fixing the lights on the car.
I have been bugging Garry to do something about the rear lights on the Lada- you know the ones on the back of your car so people can see you in the dark. We have been trying to avoid driving at night because we have no tailights-he noticed they quit working when he returned from taking his parents to Kiev last month- we do have an exceptionally bright light on our licence plate, and the four ways will work- Garry used them the night we drove in the fog- and the brake lights come on.
This is not unusual to have poorly lit tailights in Ukraine- you see tiny tailights on big trucks, most older Ladas and Moshvisches have tiny dim lights- which are sometimes white instead of red (is that car coming or going?) Garry even got stopped this week at night by the police for a document check- and they didn't say anything about the lights- he did admit he had his foot on the brake while he talked to the policeman. He was coming back alone from seeing the Ukrainian national basketball team beat the Lithuanian national team in Dnepro (he says they had more big Americans playing for Ukraine.)
Anyway Victor's neighbor fixed the lights once before when the brake lights weren't working- by making an unblowable fuse when it kept blowing fuses. Maybe this is the first indication that the rest of the story might occur, but...
Victor had said that they should get his neighbor to check the lights when he went with us to the dentist on Wednesday. So I guess that's what they did before Garry left for home. So he did some stuff, and got them were working, but went out after Garry drove 20 feet down the street.
So the guy decided to juryrig them instead, and Garry says (in hindsight) he wondered if it was a good idea to do this wire shifting before the fuses- but this guy is a mechanic of some kind (everyone in Ukraine is supposed to be able to fix a Lada- interchangable parts, and they get to do it a lot maybe). So Garry started home after telling me he'd be home in a hour. He walked in at 6:30- that's when I got to hear the rest of the story.
Just as he reached the outskirts of the city, the car started to fill with smoke fast. He pulled off the road, stopped the car, opened the dash to find a mess of melted wires. After it went out and the smoke cleared, he was surprized to find that the car would turn over so he drove home. When he got home he discovered that the car would not turn off- the lights would not turn off either after he stalled the car and put on the emergency brake so he pulled the battery cable off to kill the lights, and walked in the house to tell the tale to me and then explain it again to Maxim in Russian.
Maxim went out to see if he could find someone to fix it in the village on Saturday, as he is hoping to drive to his home village to visit his parents after we get home from church on Sunday. It started pouring rain around 7:15. (forecast says maybe snow next week)
So maybe fixing the lights ruined the car - at least a little. Hopefully we get to Dnepro on Sunday. Garry called Victor to say he wouldn't make it to help build in the morning.
Update- Max got the car running- he and Garry covered the bare wires with electrical tape, and Maxim drove it to Zaporosia Saurday morning to get fixed- hopefully it does not have any fries electronics to go with the wires.
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