The First Dharma Seal

 

 

 

"Bleed"

Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed

The first Dharma seal: All compounded things are impermanent....    Even faithful and beloved fourteen year-old Camry's are impermanent. And so it was that I found a small rainbow puddle of engine oil smack dab in the spot Carl had occupied just moments ago..  Carl has been a superb car. If you look up the word "dependable" in a dictionary, you'll see a picture of him. We've had great adventures together. But he - like me is starting to experience component failures..  I just finished going through itemizing all the things that he'd have to have fixed immediately as well as those things (that I know about) that will likely need fixing... I left off things like transmission failure, A/C failure, or engine rebuild because well - there is only so much that I'm going to put into him at this point..  The 'have to have' list is about $2000.00. The longer term (likely to need fixing at some point) is up around $4000.00.   I'm sad to do this, but I need to get another car. Carl has taken the news about as well as can be expected.. He has stoically ferried me around to dealerships to look at new vehicles...    Carl doesn't usually go in for a lot of drama, although - his hood latch mysteriously froze recently which prevented me from fully closing his hood, and there is that very recent oil leak.. Also there was quite a bit of quiet smirking when, after visiting a a few dealerships, I still hadn't identified his replacement.. I suppose we all have our limits.. He'll be off the road by the end of this month, so I've been trying to take him around to all his favorite places one last time, The Refuge (where he likes to pretend he's an off-road vehicle..), the marine railways, the fish pier, Pigeon Cove, Halibut Point.. and the grand-kids will be up for the holiday so he'll get to drive them around (he loves that).   I'll miss Carl. Ralph will have big shoes (or tires) to fill when he finally gets here..      ~