A quick driving story

Busy getting ready for the team on Sunday, but here's a quick story about driving. As you may have read in this blog, roads in Ukraine are rarely smooth, with a combination of holes and bumps (some from filling holes) to bounce  jostle us around as we travel.

our radiator defense system

Our son Micah, after visiting last year and riding from Kiev to here, said he would never complain about Manitoba roads again.

 Last year we had to fix the radiator a couple times, due to wear and tear from getting whacked on the road, so when we got home from Canada, we discovered Max had welded a rad guard on the front and under the car. So this year when we hit a hole, sometimes it's the tires on one side or the other taking the impact, but often it's the solid thunk of the metal tubing hitting the road we hear and feel.



Last week Wednesday as we were driving down the highway to our English class in the dark, we hit a hole, and there was a tremendous bang as the metal guard bottomed out and it sounded like something was torn off the bottom of the car. We thought it might be the guard or at least part of it, but Garry kept driving. It seemed the car was OK, although we could hear a small dragging sound when we got to the city.

When we got to our destination, he used my little flashlight to check under the front of the car and discovered the air-conditioning hose dragging on the ground. Good news, we'd be able to drive home if we could tie it up. After the class was over a couple of the guys helped Garry wire it up onto the front pipe there. In the morning, when he and Max looked under  the car, they realized the compressor for the air-conditioner was gone, that was the noise we heard. We spent a lot of money trying to get the air conditioning working on the car last summer, but it never really worked and it's definitely not going to be cool in the car this summer!