I miss working on my own cars. Sorta

I am a Ford girl. With the exception of a GMC I owned for a year, I have always owned Fords. Before I owned my current car, a Ford Edge, I had a Ford Explorer. I had my Explorer for eight years. I never had a problem with it. I had over 200,000 miles on it. I finally had to trade it in when we moved to the desert. Traffic here is miserable and much like that in Los Angeles. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. My Explorer was a stick shift. I thought my knees were going to explode by the time I got home at night. My husband decided I needed an automatic and I haven’t looked back.

My first Edge (I’ve had two), was very basic, bottom of the line and had a crappy stereo. I traded up to the top of the line, fully loaded Edge and I. Love. It. (except for the leather seats. Because leather seats SUCK in the Phoenix summer (which is basically nine months out of the year). This will sound strange, but since I have new cars, I don’t have any reason to work on them. I don’t have to do anything other than regular maintenance like oil changes and tire rotation. I kind of miss working on cars. Back in the day, I could change a head gasket, I replaced my own thermometer and water pump.

I look under the hood of my car now, I am lost. There is no carburetor. Nothing looks familiar. I would be lost to have to work on my own car now. But, I do feel that it is a skill I have lost. The closest I have come to working on my car, was driving through California, with expired license plates (not my fault! Okay, kinda my fault. Like, I forgot they were due and had to pick up my kids in California) and my turn signal stopped working. Nothing will get a person pulled over quicker with an expired license plate than failing to signal. Apparently, that is a clue to the police that you are a bad bad person and need to be pulled over and have your residence status checked. Anyway, I found a store, bought a kit to remove my rear taillight cover, then figured out the bulb I needed, bought it, and changed it in the parking lot. Good times! Thankfully, I did not need to find a Los Angeles auto repair shop. Because if I had to travel further than one block off the freeway, I would have been lost for sure.