Tag Archives: Automobiles

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‘The Far-Traveller’

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I’m moving through the book I’m reading with unusual slowness. So of what shall I blog? I don’t want to post about my car again; that topic has outlived its welcome. Anyway, there’s nothing much left to say.

Except that I named her. You may recall that I always name my cars, and they’re always female names – probably because of my chronic deficiency of female companionship. I used to use the names of old schoolteachers of mine, emulating the fictional detective Travis McGee, who named his Rolls Royce pickup truck after a schoolteacher from his childhood. (Note, I make no claim to ever owning a Rolls Royce pickup truck.) But I named my previous car Sigrid the Haughty, after a femme fatale from the Norse sagas.

So I chose a saga name for my “new” Toyota Rav-4 too. Because she has quite a high number on her odometer, I’ve chosen to christen her “Gudrid the Far-Traveled.”

This is another great saga name. Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir is a prominent character in the Icelandic Vinland sagas, Erik the Red’s Saga and the Saga of the Icelanders. If I recall correctly, she figures most prominently in the first, which gives the impression (to this reader at least) that it was intended as a sort of a defense of her reputation. According to the sagas, she was descended from slaves, but the saga writer takes every opportunity to point out that she was (in spite of that) a very outstanding woman who entirely transcended her humble origins. And had great stories to tell.

Just to mention the high points, she married Erik the Red’s son Thorstein, and traveled with him to Vinland (America). After his death, she married an Icelander named Thorfinn Karlsefni (the nickname means, essentially, macho), and with him attempted to plant a permanent colony in the new country. These efforts failed, unfortunately (though Gudrid bore the first European child born in America), and eventually they moved back to Thorfinn’s home in Iceland. After she was widowed, she made a pilgrimage to Rome, and she ended her life as a hermit nun. Thus she earned the nickname, víðförla (far-traveled), since she’d been to America and Rome. That made her the European who had seen the most of the world in her time.

The video clip above is a trailer for a documentary which may or may not have ever been released – I don’t know. As you’d expect, it “spins” the story, catering to current fashions of thought. Gudrid seems to be portrayed as a leader of expeditions (which she was not) and a warrior (which she even more certainly was not).

But she was a remarkable woman, and her descendants had every reason to immortalize her in literature.

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Mobile again

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I apologize for wasting bandwidth on my petty struggles with internal combustion transportation issues. But having endured so much on the topic already, you deserve the closure of being informed that I did buy a new (used) car today.

This is my “new” car – a 2009 Toyota Rav-4 (dealer’s photo). It’s a bare-bones model, with no “smart” features I’m aware of, other than the remote key fob. It’s a southern car, so there’s little rust on it, always a nice thing up here in Road Salt Country.

It turned out to have higher mileage than advertised, so I persuaded the dealer to knock a couple hundred bucks off his asking price (when a Norwegian does this, I believe, there’s someplace he can apply for a medal. I’ll have to look it up). It drives nicely, as far as I can tell so far.

My favorite thing (aside from the pretty color) is that it takes regular gas. The Subaru only accepted high test, and it got worse mileage than this one does. So that cheered me considerably.

Toyotas have a good reputation for reliability. Pray, if you will, that that will prove true for this marginal writer and Viking.

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Rainy day musing

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It’s one of those loose end nights. I’ve accomplished little today, and the book I’m reading goes slow. Above is a video I found, in which a saga scholar discusses the influence of the saga writer Snorri Sturlusson on J.R.R. Tolkien, citing his own interview with one of the Tolkiens’ Icelandic au paires.

Today was a rainy, cool day, devoted – in my world – to worrying about buying a car. I’d made contact with a guy who had one to sell that interested me. Last night I made all kinds of plans for getting over to Woodbury, where he’s located, to look at it (without a working car of my own). This morning all the plans fell apart, as it appeared somebody else was considering the car. I studied the ads over again, increasingly aware how rare is the plausible vehicle that I can actually afford. But later today the guy called me back, inviting me to call him tomorrow morning to make arrangements; he’s willing to drive the thing to my place so I can test-drive it.

I have a feeling I’ll buy it after all that trouble, unless it’s visibly smoking or trailing oil, or smells of dead bodies.

I’m already thinking of my brief adventure with Sigrid the Haughty, my Subaru Forester turbo, as a kind of midlife crisis (a little late in life, but that’s mostly how I roll). Sigrid was fast and exciting, but expensive and not really suited to me. The car I have in mind looks to be a little more bourgeois and conventional.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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Return of the Cruiser

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My long automotive nightmare is over. I find it almost impossible to believe. I’d grown accustomed over the last 3 ½ months to thinking of my old PT Cruiser as a long-ago dream, like lost love or a chance to play Hamlet. But it happened at last, though not without drama. (I was sure I had a picture of my car I could post here, but it appears I don’t. Don’t want to take one now, because it’s been sitting in a lot all summer and looks kind of grungy. Imagine, if you will, a white PT Cruiser with woody panels.)

The call came just after 7:00 this morning. The lady at the auto shop said my car was done and ready to pick up. She said they’d actually gotten a call the other day from the supplier, saying we’d have to wait another two weeks, but (as usual) they didn’t know what they were talking about. The part (a shifter cable) showed up yesterday, and they’d installed it and it was working.

I drove over, submitted my credit card, and got my keys back. The bill was steep – north of $1200. I have the money, thanks to the Lord’s provision, but it would put a big dent in my bank account.

The next step was to install new license plates. They’d actually expired back in July – not merely the tabs, but the metal plates themselves. I’d brought a screwdriver, but I found the screws were corroded, and some of them wouldn’t move at all. Finally got a mechanic (a young woman, just to make it humiliating) to do the job for me.

Then I discovered that the radio didn’t work anymore. I don’t know what it is about this garage and car radios – the one in the loaner I’d been driving didn’t work either. A guy checked the fuses, said they seemed all right. He’d have to take the dashboard off and check the ground wire. Couldn’t do it right away, could I bring it back at 1:00 this afternoon?

I took the car home, then drove it back at the time appointed. This time, thankfully, it didn’t take too long. He said it was a fuse after all. The diagram in the car, he said, was wrong. I said I wasn’t in the least surprised.

I was glad to have my wheels back, but sad about the cost. And what do you know? I opened my mail today, and there was a property tax refund from the state, covering the bulk of the bill.

Proof that God lets His rain fall upon the unjust.