Om

 

It’s been kind of an OM thing, really. A Zen thing. There’s a lot of it around. 

I’ll come back to OM.

These past – is it three? – weeks I’ve been limboed. According to my original itinerary I should be heading to Geraldton, in Western Australia,  this morning. Breaking into new territory for the first time on my (and my mice’s) journey. According to my digital technology that’s 3703 kms from my current location.

It’s been fascinating down time. Fighting a superannuation company, fighting a mechanic. Let me emphasize I have nothing but praise for the dealers who sold me the car that caused the latter conflict. They have lost thousands (yes, three or four of them) on the deal. They stood by me like a rock.

The mechanic (since fired, I believe), not so much. After the engine fault light came on after 120 kms he diagnosed a faulty turbo. Replaced it at the dealer’s expense. Fifty kms later when it came on he decided I was right: it was something to do with the exhaust recirculation unit, and he cleaned it.

Parts of it. 30 kilometres later, when the light came on, the dealer decided to lend me a car and redirect my tortured Triton to a different mechanic.

Let me speak of recirculation and Zen.

In, out. In out. Breathe.

I’ve done a lot of that these past weeks. In and  out of Melbourne. In an out of the car. In and out of mechanics and dealers.

In, out.

The car? Not so much. You see, recirculation in a car has to start somewhere. In, round and round, out. A turbo pumps the in and out pressure up a bit. The exhaust is the out. Somewhere in the ins and outs of a diesel engine the ins and outs stop. Like a heart. Clogged up. Cough cough boom.

The mechanic looked at parts of the ins and outs and replaced a red herring. When that didn’t work he kind of flossed another bit. That bit didn’t need flossing. I asked him to check that. So he told the dealer that the problem was that I didn’t know how to drive.

While all the soot lay there, sniggling and choking the lungs of my new-old car until a different mechanic fixed it. All toxic and sludgy in a bit of the system call in-take. In. Fairly basic to an in out process.

In. Out. See?

As it happens Professor Google tells you it’s what normally goes wrong. I told the mechanic that, but apparently I don’t know how to drive.

I think it hunky dory now. It’s hard to trust process after three weeks down time, but the car, identical to my car in New Zealand, feels better now. It has now passed all the road tests that it failed over the past 300 kms of its new life. It goes up hills without dying.

Definite improvement.

Though there’s not many hills between here and Geraldton. I know the road, that far, and how to drive it.

Even the unrelated battle with a recalcitrant and obfuscating superannuation company seems to be drawing towards a satisfactory conclusion. Soon, they said,when I rang them again, yesterday.

Mmmm, I said.

So, later this morning, the mice and I hit the road, properly. The furthest I’ve got on this trip so far, despite clocking up over 2000 kms in three vehicles (four really, but one was only 20 kms), is Bendigo. In a rental. I hope to pass there after reloading the car, this morning.

Then off I will go, northwards first, then west.

OM? It’s a Zen thing. I’m not a Zen practitioner, though I studied it a little as an undergrad. And of course I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  One did, in those days. My flatmates read it, arguing over what model bike it was, concluding it was a Honda CB350. I owned a CB400F  at one stage but that wasn’t very Zen. Very vroom, though, until it wasn’t.

But Zen and the Art wasn’t about Hondas. It was about breathing. In, out. And somehow over the past three weeks I’ve mainly kept doing that. Therapy-walking many kilometres, enjoying copious quantities of daughters and grandchildren. Breathing. My travels have traced an arc from Kinglake to Bendigo, barely a blip on the roads ahead.

May the journey now begin.

Maybe.

In. Out.