Surviving the Elements

My title may be a little dramatic for what reality was but it’s my form of clickbait. Eye bait? The story starts the last time I left the house for food. My truck was telling me that it wanted an oil change. Usually a simple process is much more uncertain nowadays. It turns out that my trucks request came at a great time. I called the dealership that I generally get my service done at and they revealed to me that they were only allowed to conduct ‘essential’ service until Monday, May 4. Then they could start conducting more ordinary business with some new rules and guidelines. One of those rules is that no one can enter the facility. You seal your keys up in an envelope and pass it through the slot. Sounded like they were taking precautions. I booked an appointment to get my tires swapped back to summer tires, to get the oil changed and to right a recall wrong. Something to do with the sliding portion of the back window, I didn’t really pay attention. I asked if they were doing their shuttle service with the assumption they were not, and was proven correct. That meant I’d have to wait. But not inside, I’d have to wait in the parking lot. I asked about rain and they assured me they’d find a spot for customers out of the rain and following social distancing rhetoric. I wasn’t about to take time off for this so I planned to bring my computer and a chair and make a mobile office in a parking lot.

And that is just what I did. I had my chair, some water, my computer bag and a jacket. I was able to hot spot my rarely used iPad and get my computer online. I sent a rash of emails and answered some critical questions while enjoying some podcasts on my Sony Bluetooth headphones. I was even able to take a conference call and capture some notes. It wasn’t a fun day outside however. My face protection, more for the cold than anything else in the middle of an abandoned car lot, wasn’t as comfortable as I hoped. The wind and light rain weren’t fun either.

In the end, the work got done, I got my work done and the whole affair came in under the estimated time. I was back on the road, rolling away, in just around three hours. And good thing too, that was a big mug of water and there was no where to go. I’m back in my home office trying to warm up. Hope I didn’t catch a chill of some kind.