WELL IT FINALLY HIT ME BIG TIME!
I had heard about it for a while now but after a year of living here you start to feel that you somehow have been lucky and avoided it. And we did avoid it for just about a year. There were warnings, and you try to be careful, but eventually you relax a little bit and that's when it gets you. I didn't know that the rainy season had anything to do with it but come to find out it does. When it happens it takes a while for it to fully come on. It comes in waves. You feel it at first and then everything is good. Then it comes on again.
I was sweating like a madman, it was very hot and humid and all I could think of was getting home which at the time seemed a little on the impossible side. Rimma was riding in the car with me and we were both yelling at the other cars to get out of the way. WE HAD AN EMERGENCY HERE! They either drive too fast or too slow or not at all if they are texting at a signal light, which is usually the case. Today was the too slow day and the texting day. They could not have moved fast enough for me.
IT TOOK ALL OF MY CONCENTRATION....
and a certain amount of physical skills to not lose it right there at a signal light. Tighten tighten..... your grip on the steering wheel. Things are bad enough. Don't want the car to go out of control. The light turns green and no one moves. "Come on. We gotta go." Another wave came on. This one seemed like it would not end. Then at least it continued with it's usual ebb and flow, and we continued with our yelling "Get out of the way" "Get going." Why is it that in times like this everything seems to move in slow motion.
I told Rimma to call or text our mechanic Aaron. He didn't live too far and maybe we could get to his place before the shit really hits the fan. I didn't think we could make it. We might have to use the "Abort and push technique." Aaron knew I had bad gas and was willing and prepared to help. The problem was we just had to get there.
All kinds of thoughts were flying through my head. The one major thought was how does the rainy season affect this. We all know that you can't drink the water. Well maybe the water gets into where everything is stored and ends up giving me the bad gas. Well it ended up being something like that. Or so we think, or thought. Funny enough Aaron has a lot of experience with stuff like this.
Well we did make it home, although not without incident along the way.
We did however have to get to Aaron's place. I was scared. I didn't want to push our luck again. But we did, and we were off. This time everything was okay. We made it to Aaron's place. He was genuinely concerned. As I said he was very familiar with this type of thing and was concerned that more damage had been done internally.
He asked "Where did you go?" I said "Le Gas." He said "Man don't go there. Go to Pemex." They are usually always good quality. You take a risk going to the other lesser known places. He said "I can drain your tank and clean it and see if that makes a difference." I told him I thought I almost drained my tank in the car trying to get home. I had the pedal to the metal and was using up a lot so the tank is pretty close to empty. He said he still needed to clean it.
Oh, I might have forgotten to mention that I had bad gas in the car. I hope you didn't think I personally had bad gas.
I'VE BEEN LUCKY.
Still no Montezuma's Revenge for me. I was a little worried about it at first but if you don't drink the water and don't eat from street vendors you'll probably be okay. BUT NOT YOUR CAR!!! Who woulda thought? I had heard about dirty gas, but everything is dirty down here. I had also heard that they try to screw you at the pump that sometimes they don't reset it. So you have to check that it was reset to zeros. You have to be vigilant all the time for everything.
So we filled the car with dirty gas and it didn't like it. It sputtered and wouldn't idle properly and would die if you took your foot off of the gas. I had to brake with my left foot and keep the gas going with my right. Something I used to have to do with some of my old cars back in the day when they had carburetors and wouldn't idle properly. Hey, I actually rebuilt one of my carburetors and actually changed my brakes master cylinder. That was in my twenties. No money so everything was DIY. Also that was a period in time when you opened up the hood and could actually recognize your engine. Can't do that anymore. You now need a computer to get anything done, and a degree in physics helps too.
So for a while I felt like I was back in my twenties desperately trying to get my car home or to the mechanic before it failed completely. Yes it turns out that there was water in the gas. Why? Because down here when it rains water gets everywhere. Even in the gas storage tanks. I have in all my years never encountered this sort of thing. And of course Rimma says "It's Mexico. There are no codes or regulations for anything anywhere." Guess that applies to storage tanks at gas stations. They stick a little coffee can in the ground and fill it and whatever else gets in there, so what. "So a little water gets in the gas. We'll still be able to sell it." The bottom line is money. And does the customer have any recourse? No! You just hope they use a decent lubricant when they stick it to ya.
So when it rains a lot as it has for the past month or two, water finds it's way into the little coffee can they use to store the gas.
Aaron the mechanic says there is definitely water in the gas plus some other sediment bullshit. Now we have to hope that no great internal damage was done.
So another day without the car. Another day wondering what else can happen. After a little research I find out that water can have a serious deleterious effect to an engine. Aaron says he doesn't feel that serious damage has been done. So we'll just see what happens.
BREAKING NEWS
Spark plug damage. Aaron the mechanic is a very nice and thorough guy. He's going through whatever he can short of taking the engine apart and analyzing everything. He says the plugs will have to be replaced. Not a big issue but the car was driven for about a week as we limped it along sputtering from the bad gas to get where we needed to go. We had notified Aaron at this point and he said that it sounds like bad gas or water in the gas. But the one thing that he neglected to say was "Stop driving it." Not putting any blame on him. We're the idiots that made the choice to drive it. No telling how much other damage has been done.
WELCOME TO MEXICO. Now go home. Oh wait! This IS home. OH FUCK!!!