So, as I said, the frickin' van has two jobs: To fetch groceries and to go to the dump. At this rate, it could just be a home for wayward squirrels very quickly.
I went to the dump this afternoon on my weekly trash run. When the goddamn squirrels are done rifling through the trash and feasting on the garbage, I get to take their foul leavings off to the local transfer station, which is a fancy word for dump. They don't actually dump things there anymore, which is why they call it a transfer station -- all the crap people leave there gets transferred somewhere else with a lower property value, I guess. They've capped over the places they have dumped stuff with dirt and planted grass and wildflowers to make it look good. They also stuck big PVC pipes to vent the methane that bubbles up from underground constantly. Where we used to live there was a "transfer station" that had these vent-pipes actually lit on fire, like an industrial refinery burning off its unused supply of natural gas.
The transfer station's road is shaped like a big loop. You drive clockwise through the loop, and at the lowest point is loop the gateway we all exit in and out of. Right near there, in the lower part of the loop, is where all the recycleables go.
Apparently, sometime in the past couple of years some anal-retentive organization freaks have taken over the transfer station, because you now require a Ph.D. to throw things away. I have to know which kind of paper, plastic, glass and metal goes in which bins, and if I don't get it right, I'm accosted by someone whose job it is to know these things.
Of course, he has four teeth and never graduated from elementary school, but he knows the difference between chipboard and cardboard and by God, he is going to educate everyone else on the planet with his knowledge as well. He often shares his views on George W. Bush, the situation in Iraq and whether or not it will rain today as well. Actually, come to think of it, I have not seen this shambling mutant in quite some time. Perhaps he's died or retired from the trash business and moved to a trailer park in the Everglades.
Once you've passed through this gauntlet there is massive corrugated steel structure that looks like it houses rockets for NASA. Inside is a great big pit that funnels into an open-topped container truck trailer far below. On both sides, the residents of Mashpee hurl their bagged trash into this truck. Periodically throughout the week, the transfer station employees hook up the trailer to the truck and haul it to one side of the loop, where it is later taken away to God-knows-where for further processing.
The right side of La Casa Grande De Basura is a drive-through entry. "5 BAG LIMIT" says the sign. "NO BARRELS." During the weekend, a line five or six cars deep will often form near this entry. When people with more than five bags who choose to dump barrels pull through, the people behind them often fantasize about killing them and dumping their bodies in the pit. But that would block traffic, so they avoid doing it.
On the left hand side is an entry way that residents with presumably more than five bags of trash or barrels are supposed to back into. It works fine and dandy, though its proximity to the Cardboard Masher Upper and the Dead Sea of Rotting Mattresses makes it difficult to navigate from time to time.
So, what does all this have to do with the Frickin' Van, you may wonder. Well, it's by and large just background info to help you paint a picture in your mind of where I spent some time today with the Frickin' Van, my trash-hauling machine. I loaded it up with the three recycle bins and three 33 gallon bags of household trash and then left. When I got to the transfer station, I let the van idle as I emptied the three recycle bins one by one. Then I put them away, closed the slider door, and got behind the wheel, giant exhaust hole gurgling its deep bass.
I looked down at the Frickin' Van's instrument panel and noticed that the instrument gauge was a few notches higher than normal. On the Frickin' Van, the temperature gauge is a left pointing arrow that goes from bottom to top, cool to hot. The word NORMAL is written inside the gauge, and normally the need stays near the N. Today it was near the R.
Nothing bad about that, I thought. A bit warm than I'm used to seeing it, but whatever. Only, the gauge almost NEVER moves. Even when this van has overheated, as it has done twice, that gauge almost never budged. I've always thought it was broken or something.
I drive up to the drive-thru entrance and wait. Some woman in a gold Lexus SUV is pulling all her trash out, and her overfed gold retreiver is hanging out of the back having a good sniff. He's at the transfer station -- lots of fun things to smell. Finally she finishes and leaves, making room for me to pull the Frickin' Van in.
So I pull into the big house and pop open the tailgate, and proceed to dump out my trash. I'm only out of the van maybe twenty seconds -- three bags, boom, I'm done, slam the tailgate. In that time, the temperature gauge needle has risen to between M and O.
And worse, the Engine light is on. When that Engine light comes on and stays on, bad things happen. Fluids rush out of the bottom of the Frickin' Van. AAA is summoned.
"Just get me home," I command the van, and pop the transmission into Drive. I pull around the far corner of the big loop and barrel down the left side and out the gate. By the time I've driven to the corner of the road that borders the fenced in edge of the transfer station's property line, the gauge is already dropping and the Engine light has turned off.
I didn't have any other incidents on the way home, but it was enough to get the heart racing. I dunno if it's a stuck thermostat or just other weirdness, but something's not right. Just not right enough to make me wary of driving the Frickin' Van again unless I absolutely have to.