Personal Stories

Thoughts for October 3, 2020

It’s going to be a cool night tonight. I can feel it already. It’s just after 6PM and already it’s down to 52°F. No frost advisory, but still going to be chilly. There are some scattered showers around the area too. It’s enough to give us some relief from the fire threat, but the drought is still with us. Most of the state is in severe drought, according to the map.

I intended to go out geocaching today. That didn’t happen. My spouse was asked to work and we thought it would be a quick thing, but he didn’t get back home until 9AM and my son had to be at work at 11, so I couldn’t just leave.

Last night, when we were out at dinner for our anniversary, I happened to mention that I heard some strange banging from the rear of my Wrangler and I thought maybe one of the rear shocks was broken. I’d only gotten new ones in the Spring of 2019. We actually bought a lift kit from Rough Country because that was cheaper than the shocks for my Wrangler, and I thought lifting it an inch wasn’t a big deal. It lifted it a little more than an inch, but I was okay with it.

Well, this morning when he came back from work, he looked under the rear of my Wrangler, and not only was the shock broken, it had punched through the bottom of the Jeep. Now, our usual mechanic had it about a month ago to fix the rear wheel bearings and axle where it was leaking and didn’t see it, so it had to have happened after that.

My plans were out the window at that point, although getting that late of a start anyway made it hard to cover the ground I wanted to. I’m kind of ticked that after 18 months (at the most) the shock broke and punctured the bottom of my Wrangler. The previous shocks had been on there for 8 years. My spouse says a lot of people complain about Rough Country products online, so I guess I’ll cross them off my list for ever getting anything of theirs again. He bought new rear shocks at Autozone today and put them in, but tomorrow he’s going to try and cover the hole with a metal plate so it doesn’t rust. Geocaching this weekend is a wash-out.

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