Humble Pie

My friend, Vanessa, once told me I was the dumbest smart girl she knew.  Around that same time my family coined the term "Poor Dumb  Becka."*  Both memories were running through my brain today while I faced my biggest challenge this month: installing a bike rack on the roof on my car.

I owned a truck for almost 10 years and everything about it was awesome.  But would you have guessed that the most awesome part was being able to throw everything in the back of my truck and secure it with a bungee or two?  Well, believe it, that was the most awesome part.  In October 2011 I admitted to myself that after breaking three Toyota engines three different ways maybe I shouldn't drive Toyota's anymore.  Then I began thinking about how great it would be to get more than 20 miles per gallon on a very good day, and decided that maybe a car was the way to go.  Shortly after this, my heart led me to Phyllis the Forester.  While I love her, we've had some troubles.  Someday I may get over the catalytic converted and radiator troubles that the dealer took care of (and if you're interested in hearing about a Subaru dealer you should definitely avoid, let me know), I've learned from the clutch troubles, and I'm working on fixing the tire problem.  But the thing that just kills me is the fact that I had to buy a roof rack to hold more than one bike on my car, or to hold both a bike and my camping stuff.

Phyllis

Brent started me on the path toward bike rack ownership with his Christmas present, and I had some extra money come my way so I was able to buy two top-of-the-line racks.  Once they arrived the trouble started. Before I could put the rack on, I had to figure out the Mighty Mounts that would get the racks on the factory rack that came with my car.  Last week I spent a really unfortunate half hour sitting on the scorching hot roof of my car putting together the mounts according to the instructions, only to find that I actually need to attach the mounts to the rack, then to the car.  This of course was after I had an I-can't-ever-get-anything-right-ever hissy fit out in my drive way because I couldn't figure out which direction to turn a silly little knob of the mounts (I blame all the sun).

Thumb dials, the source of last week's frustration.  Lefty-loosy, right-tighty is difficult to figure out when the object being turned is upside down and the sun is out.   

I got 2/3 of the way through attaching the rack to the mounts before giving up because a bolt wouldn't fit where it should.  The bike rack wasn't going to be on for a weekend ride and I had bigger fish to fry: apparently I'm also too dumb to properly replace a tube on my bike.  So I gave up for the week and had a truly delightful time biking Blacksmith Fork Canyon and climbing at City of Rocks (which I'll totally blog about later).

Fast forward to today.  I was feeling smug, really smug.  I had finagled myself a whole week of awesome vacation.  Monday I did a little work, but not a lot.  Tuesday I did some field work in the Willard Spur, a new place for me, and I recalled how much I like doing field work when I'm not in charge.  Today the only thing on the agenda was getting the roof rack situation figured out, and maybe making salad dressing.  I spent most of the day going on walks and catching up on my periodicals, it was the perfect summer vacation-at-home day.  Then I decided to conquer the roof rack and my smugness disappeared.

Such a happy, cushy, field day, full of SAV, nutrient experimentation, and shade.  I may start lugging around an umbrella for my field work, because it was sure nice to have.  

After finishing the final third of the rack-to-Mighty-Mount attachment, I spent 30 minutes attaching the rack (via Mighty Mounts) to Phyllis.  I spent this whole episode thinking "I don't have a degree in bike rack mounting."  Then chiding myself because no one would celebrate my degree in bike rack mounting, as such an endevour comes with [conflicting] instructions.  This was followed by despair because I'm pretty sure that I should be able to get good grades in school and be able to assemble things with instructions.  After that I went on to think about all the important life skills I wish they'd teach class about (i.e. gift wrapping, following instructions, programming things like phones).  All the while I was grumbling the following thought (in my dad's voice): Curse this car and name brand bike rack, it costs me just as much to mount my bike as it did to buy the damn bike.  [I have a cheap bike and bike racks are kind of expensive.]

After adjusting everything just right (which really did take 30 minutes), I tried to get my bike up there, just to make sure it worked.  In a fortuitous and overly-humbling moment, I attempted this lift while a neighbor was in the driveway.  It was awesome that she came to help me stabilize the bike, but overly-humbling that I couldn't get the bike up there myself.  After figuring out which of the three adjustments it would take to keep the bike in place, I then had to figure out how to get the kayak up.  45 minutes later, the bike and kayak were up on the roof, I got over the "That's why you can't have nice things" rant in my head, and I was free to go about finding my car keys while loosing my new bike rack key.

The finished product: a car ready for adventure.  

If there are any lessons to be learned through all this they may be that:
1.  Smugness is always followed by a heaping dose of humble pie
2.  You can do hard things, but only after swallowing your humble pie and remembering to breath and follow the instructions you were given.
3.  Owning a truck is one-thousand times better than owning a car, at least when it comes to easily carrying lots of things.

And now I'm off to vacation with Brent's family, where I will use both the bike and kayak I've worked so hard to get up on my car.

*Both Vanessa and my family hold spots close to my heart, that's why they can mock me like that.