Well, winter is here, and what better way to identify the season than by having ones car battery fail to turn over an engine? Good times, good times.
Sarah called me and said that the van was dead. I left the office to go and resuce her. Superman was busy at the time, so it was up to me. Oh, sure, Aquaman was available, but... yeah. Anyway, I surprisingly made it to her location without getting lost. I'm not real familiar with the area yet. There's a lake every ninth furlong almost, so the roads don't always intersect at nice right angles like they do in corn country. You can also be on the corner of Commerce and Commerce in Commerce. Who's the public official that gave sign-off on that?
I got to the van and reasoned that it was a bad battery. The van has been getting harder to start since the temperature dropped, and the battery was probably pretty old, since it was a clay pot with some leaves and acids in it. Etched between the terminals were the symbols 
, which roughly translates into "Before starting, place sacrifice to Ra on the exhaust manifold." Probably time to get a new one.
We went and got a battery and, because I didn't want to run back home, I also got an adjustable wrench. Who needs more than that in order to change a battery? If you just thought to yourself "You do, Ron, you dumbass", then you've made it to the next round.
The removal of the battery in the van is a feat that Mensa uses to find its highest order. The battery sits under a fuse panel mounted to a cross beam, which is bolted to the frame in three places. Each bolt is guarded by a head of Cerberus, and the fuse panel exists in a nexus between our universe and the maddening realization of infinity. Oh, and everything was metric. I wrestled with the stupid thing for at least half an hour, swearing until I couldn't swear any more, outside of our children's pediatrician's office. I hope they let me come back.
I broke down and drove the fifteen minutes to my house to get my socket set so I could do this job properly. We stopped and got some grub and drove back to the van. I continued to work on the battery until everything was clear. Triumphant, I reached down and pulled on the battery. Yep, there was a brace at the foot of the battery that kept it in place. And what better way for a car to say "I love you" than with a bolt so far out of reach that an extension was necessary. A ten inch extension. Which I didn't own. "Shuckin' beenoddle!" I yelled. I was to the point to where I could no longer curse properly. "Livid" is probably the polite word.
We set out to find an extension so I could remove this one final bolt from the M.C. Escher design that is the battery mount. After much wondering about which god forsaken lake we were driving around, we found a place where I could by the proper tool. We found our way back to the van, I removed the old battery, mounted the new one, and started the van. If there were ever a time for a ticker-tape parade, that would have been it.
Halfway back to the office, I get a call. From Sarah, the Good News Fairy. Van's dead again. She was able to coast to a parking lot, and there was a "mufflers and more" shop across the street. Bless their souls, they were willing to check the battery for a reduced rate of $39.95. I decided to do a self diagnosis, and it looks like silly ol' me didn't tighten down a nut well enough, so a lead that went into a mysterious master fuse panel came off, killing all electronics in a thirty foot radius. The van runs fine now.
What did we learn today? There's a right tool for every job. Nothing is as close as you'd like it to be. It's really damn cold out right now. Learn your surroundings. And if you go to do something and think to yourself "That's going to be a bitch", think long and hard before doing it yourself.