DOMESTIC ISSUES. F*** the Sliding Door!
When I open the sliding door the metal cup holding my toothbrush and toothpaste crashes to the pavement. I cuss under my breath, bending over to pick it up. Almost every time I open the sliding door something (usually my toothbrush) falls out of the nook behind the passenger’s seat. Almost every time, I mumble an expletive. With toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, I glance around the dark street. Sleeping in the van crosses my mind, but the late-night traffic of Tacoma convinces me not too. Plus, Julie told me her couch is really comfortable.
I yawn.
Then, with a half-assed, lazy motion I slam the Eurovan door shut. But the hinge sticks slightly short of the latch, so I push my hip into the door. (As evidenced by the large butt-and-hip dent on the panel, this is a customary maneuver.) Something, however, doesn’t feel right this time. I slam my hip into the door one more time, and the entire sliding door comes to life. It springs off the hinge, knocks me backward onto the curb, and slams down onto the pavement.
Amazed, I crouch on the curb and gawk at the van. The top hinge of the door is still in its track, keeping the door upright, but the bottom and middle hinges are completely detached. Which is why the door is resting awkwardly on the pavement. Wish I hadn’t had that second glass of wine, I think to myself. Slowly, I turn away and walk inside the house.
“Julie,” I say to my short, energetic friend who is watching TV. “I need your help.” She doesn’t even ask me why, just follows me silently out to the street.
“Wow,” she says, and without hesitation squats down on the pavement and lifts the heavy door. I sidle up beside her and attempt pushing the middle hinge back into the track. It refuses to line-up properly.
“Maybe try the bottom one first,” Julie grunts from her squatted stance below me. I join her in a squat and take some of the weight. We wiggle the bottom hinge back into the track, and then, without thinking, we both stand up to work on the middle hinge.
“Uh oh,” Julie says as the door crashes back down onto the pavement. We jump onto the curb.
“In the past, when one of the wheels on that hinge would pop-out…” I say, my voice trailing off as I open the back of the Eurovan and rummage through my climbing gear, “…I’d have to use my nut tool to get it back in.”
“We need a crow bar,” Julie says. I hear her lifting the door. “And you got anything to prop the door up with?” I stick my head out from the back of the van: Julie’s putting the bottom hinge on the track by herself, while resting the door on her thigh.
“Yeah,” I respond, crawling into the van from the back. I emerge with my nut tool, as well as the red, plastic bin I keep my shoes in. I slide the bin underneath the door, but it’s not quite high enough. Leaving Julie with the door, again, I disappear back into the van, and grab the fattest book in my library: The Freedom of the Hills.
The bin and the book are almost the right height. We set to work trying to get the wheels back into the track: Julie presses on the sliding door, trying to line the wheels up correctly, while I pound, pry and make groaning noises at the hinge with the nut tool. We decide, on the count of the three, Julie is going to slam her body weight into the door while I lift up an edge of the track with the nut tool.
“1…2…3…” I cringe, Julie shoves her weight into the door, the nut tool breaks in half, and the sliding door slams down onto Freedom of the Hills, knocks the shoe bin off balance, and then crashes onto the pavement.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I say, dancing around on the curb, holding my severed nut tool. Julie and I make one more attempt, this time with the handle of my caste iron pan. When the handle of my caste iron goes the way of my nut tool, we give up.
“Julie,” I say, as we prop the door up on the shoe bin for the night, “what am I going to do?”
In two days, I start work for the Boojum Institute in southern California.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” Julie says. “I tried pulling out my best alpha lesbian for you. Sorry it didn’t work.”
I laugh, and smile at Julie, ever so grateful to be with a friend on the night my sliding door decides to break. I could be driving through Oregon or northern California tonight, I think to myself, on a mountain pass, alone, stopping to pee, with no cell phone service....
To protect my belongings, I decide to sleep in the Eurovan. I crawl in through the front door, and barricade the sliding door with piles of books and climbing gear. Up in my loft on the top of the van, tucked into my sleeping bag, I begin to worry. Tomorrow is Saturday. What if I can’t find a body shop that can fix the door in the morning? Do I buy a bus ticket? But then what do I do with all my stuff? Eventually I dose off to sleep. But every time I hear someone walk past the van, I wake up, startled.
In the morning, Julie makes me a cup of strong coffee, and I walk across the street to a gas station. The woman behind the counter tells me their mechanics are busy for the day, but she gives me a phone number for a body shop down the road.
I call the body shop, and within fifteen minutes two men with a car jack and a crow bar come to my rescue. Within ten minutes they manage to jam the door on just well enough so that I can drive (very slowly) to the body shop, without it falling off.
The two men work all morning on the Eurovan. When they finish, they even wipe the layers of WD-40 off the paneling for me. (For several months I religiously sprayed the track with WD-40 so that the wheels on the hinge would slide, and the door would shut.)
“Thank you so much,” I say, shaking the hands of the two mechanics. “Is that the office? To pay?” I ask, pointing across the shop.
“Don’t worry about it,” the older man says with a chuckle. I think he’s joking, and laugh awkwardly.
“No, really,” the other man says. “He owns the place. We’re not going to charge you.”
“Just promise us you won’t open that door again until you get the entire hinge replaced.”
“Oh, I promise,” I say, a huge smile spreading across my face. “Thank you so much. You just made my week, my month, my year actually.”
Two days later, I pull into the parking lot of the Boojum Institute’s base, outside of Idyllwild, CA, just in time for my briefing and logistics meeting. With resolution, I park the van in a spot next to our storage shed, where it will get afternoon shade for the next two months while I’m off driving the company’s rig. No one will bother the van here, and when I return in two months, I’ll have the time and money to look into fixing the door. I think about sticking a note in the window, asking people not to use the sliding door, but I decide it’s not worth the effort. Everyone’s working, no one will be around, the door will be fine. Or so I thought….
*Side Note: This event happened in September of 2009. The name of the body shop escapes me, as do the names of the two men who reattached the door for me. When their business card resurfaces in the Eurovan, I’ll be sure to post the information. As a female who learned nothing about cars growing up, the Eurovan and I have had some unpleasant experiences—and expenses—with dealerships, mechanics, and body shops. I’m incredibly grateful for the generosity of the two men who jammed my sliding door back into place.
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