It’s My Birthday And I’ll Cry If I Want To: No I Won’t! Not This Year!

March 13 is my birthday. Last year, the world ended on my birthday — schools canceled, work suspended, no sports, the beginning of this bullshit “new normal.” If you need a review of how shitty last year was, here is the story I wrote about March 2020.

So besides the normal, existential feeling of getting another year older and all that entails when you are over the age of 21, I had a lot of pressure on this year, 2021, to be a better day.

Not this year, Buttercup! March 13 was going to be different. It was a Saturday, the sun was shining, and I was going Jeeping on the rocks with my friends. Nothing was going to derail this year’s birthday.

Friday, March 12, I drove my Jeep to the gas station and around town for a bit of a test drive. I broke a hub and had replaced it a month or so ago, so I hadn’t moved the Fire Jeep for a while and needed a little test before I put it on the trailer. After dumping some too-expensive gas in, I was back home and loading it on the trailer for tomorrow’s Jeep run. No problems and everything was good!

Saturday morning I woke up in a great mood. I sat in the hot tub and drank my coffee before talking to my kids. I had lots of time until I was meeting Howard, Harvey, and Dave at Dan’s Ferry. I made my lunch, laid out some cold-weather clothes, and put my boots in the garage so I remembered to put them on before I left.

I went out and started my pickup and Jeep to let them warm up. It had been 23 degrees overnight, so I wanted to let things warm up before heading out. As I started my Jeep, my voltmeter caught my attention: no charge.

Uh Oh. I revved up the engine a little to excite it and my voltmeter started dancing: banging back and forth between no draw and over 18 volts.

Uh Oh. There is a disturbance in The Force. I quickly threw open the hood and started wiggling battery connections, hoping for the easy, quick fix. As I looked at the battery a little closer, my heart dropped — it was physically and visibly swollen.

Big Time Uh Oh. Now, time was not leisurely. I had about 10 minutes before I had to leave. I forget everything I had nicely laid out, including my better boots, and rushed to the NAPA.

Three hundred dollars and an hour later, I had a new battery and new alternator and was almost done buttoning it up on the trailer in the parts store parking lot.

If you have never done major mechanic work in an auto parts parking lot, you probably do not own a Jeep. It’s an experience. Everybody wants to stop and talk to you and look at your stuff when you are trying to NASCAR everything and get it back together as fast as humanly possible. I have friends who have damn near rebuilt their entire engine and ignition systems on the trailer in parking lots. Many a u-joint and driveline have been changed in parking lots. One time, I had to build new battery cables and put two new batteries in a diesel pickup, towing a Jeep, in the parking lot of a NAPA after unexpectedly staying the night in that parking lot.

Parts store parking lot rebuilds are a thing. And I was almost done with my latest one.

I tightened the last bolt and hit the key, a slight smile crossing my face. My birthday was about to get better.

Nothing. No spark. Not even a check engine light. Nothing turned over.

My heart dropped. How could this be? I checked battery cables; all were connected. I must have shorted something out, and now I had fuses to check.

Bad words crashed through my brain.

I threw my hands up in defeat. I slowly slouched my way into the NAPA to get my core charges on the battery and alternator. I called my friends and told them I wasn’t going to make it. My birthday, even after $300 in parts, wasn’t any better than last year. Once is bad enough; twice counts as a streak or a pattern. My hands were greasy and my knuckles scuffed. I was sweaty. I was pissed.

As I walked out of the parts store, I looked at the hood up on my Jeep, looking sorry behind my pickup. More bad words. I climbed up on the trailer to close my hood when I saw it — one black negative wire hanging outside the hood.

I suddenly remembered: I had one negative wire to a battery cable that grounded my whole fuel injection system. As soon as I touched the negative wire to the post, I heard the relays start clicking and opening. I flew down, grabbed a 1/2" wrench, and quickly had it back on.

I hit the key and it ran, showing 14 volts on the voltmeter. My birthday was back on!

I quickly called Harvey back and sprinted towards Hemingway Butte. I had left all my warm clothes and boots in the garage but I didn’t have time for those trifles. I got to the parking lot, unloaded, hollered at them on the radio, and caught everybody at the top of Meatgrinder. They had just finished the first trail.

We ran Dirty Little Secret and Teeter Totter. We didn’t hurry, and got out and hiked a couple of times. It was an awesome day. There was no wind down in the bottom of the ravines and the 60-degree spring sun is starting to green up the desert. My Jeep ran awesome and climbed all the hard obstacles without much trouble. Everything was right in the world again.

I even have a mystery to solve. I found a cell phone propped up on a rock. It was on a side trail called Red Rocks. We haven’t run Red Rocks in a long time because it is buried under tumbleweeds. In fact, a lot of our trails are in danger of being lost because they are buried in 20 feet of tumbleweeds. As we hiked Red Rocks to look at the situation, I looked across the trail and saw a phone propped up on a rock. I thought Dave had left his over there, filming something, since he had been standing next to it. He denied it, and I picked it up.

We charged it once we got back to the Jeeps and couldn’t find any information on it about an owner, so when I got home I posted several places on Facebook about the phone. Red Rocks is not a destination resort, and most people don’t know how to get there. I bet I know the person whose phone it is.

Mysteries aside, my birthday ended up really cool. I went to dinner with my son and daughter after getting back into town and had a big steak, medium rare, that was perfect. So even after an auspicious start that could have got me down, everything ended up great.

I have a sign on my desk at school that says “Ignore the Noise — Focus on What You Can Control.” Nick Saban, the head football coach at Alabama, has the same sign in his office, which is where I stole the idea from. When work stuff goes wrong, I look at that sign and figure out what I can control.

My birthday didn’t start the right way. I couldn’t control my battery and alternator going bad overnight on the trailer, but I could control my reaction and effort to fix the situation. I ignored the noise, focused on what I could control, and ended up having a glorious day.

I’m taking my birthday as a positive. Here’s to a much better 2021!

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