YES!! I got the spark plug out and I took it over to Ralph at Hayden Honda; I held it in front of me, still in the little spark plug remover socket, sort of like an altar boy with a candle. He verified it was fouled and showed me the carbon particle that was misdirecting the spark. So, with new spark plug in hand, I headed home and bent to the task on the garage floor. I mention that because I am suddenly wondering why I did the garage floor thing yesterday and today in two pairs of good jeans instead of a $3 pair from GoodWill.

But, anyway, I got the spark plug in and put the cover back on and . . . held my breath and turned the key and pushed the starter button and it came to life. YES! Oh, by the way, somewhere in that process, I started breathing again . . . or I would be dead now.  Sorry. That’s not my line; it’s a quote from As Time Goes By with Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. Palmer plays the husband Lionel and I adore him. He talked about stopping breathing when he first saw Jean (Dench), then after a pause added, “Of course, I started again or I’d be dead.”

Ah, but back to the scooter; I rode it over to the fairgrounds and then down past the middle school, giving it a little gas as I did so. I thought perhaps someone might say something about the old lady on a scooter and Summer would know (without saying we were related) that it was running again. It took courage to go by the school; I had to tell myself, “Steady now; you don’t want to fall and humiliate her.” Of course, my imagination had me crashing and the paramedics coming and someone saying, “Say, Summer, isn’t that YOUR grandmother?” But by the time I made it through that scenario, I had already negotiated the trip past the three sides of the school and was headed home.

Now, I guess I will clean myself up and make an appointment to have my hair colored. Gosh that will be boring. Maybe I’ll just wear my helmet all the time . . .

I woke up thinking to myself that I should try to do something about the spark plug. Finding it would be a good start and so, after running Alison to work, I figured out how to access the spark plug area – which is under a floor panel next to the gas cap cover panel. There’s stuff in there all right – tubes and little metal machiney-looking doodads. I didn’t see the spark plug (which seems like it should be one word, but is not) and so came in to access the internet once again. I had time to do this because it is East Noble’s Collaboration Wednesday. You can just hear the deadpan disdain with with those four words were enunciated in my mind as I typed, can’t you? Perhaps it was even deadpan total disdain. Right now I am forcing myself to throttle back on this subject; I am going to a happy place. Oh, gee, the happy place turned out to be me in my imagination using a sledge hammer on the school corporation windows.

OH! I went off to take Summer to school and forgot to push publish so now I have to decide if I want to add part two of the morning in this post or not. I’ll think I’ll tell you the rest in a new one.