On the eve as we go forward on a broken, unlubricated Tundra

So simple, yet so difficult.

One of the unexpected difficulties of growing older is that your stuff grows older with you. And, beyond that, a lot of that stuff fails before you do. All the accoutrements of life you have come to depend on based on experience with them and with the failures of other similar products wear out right along with you: Machines they don't make parts for any more, cleaners that worked but have given way to new and improved cleaners that don't work as well and cost more.

For instance, on this past trip to the East Pole I managed to break a part of the snowmachine. 

Understand this is an almost 20-year-old Ski-Doo Tundra II and for those who don't know about it, the Tundra has long been the favored machine for people who live in the Alaska Bush. Relatively inexpensive when compared with other machines, light weight, and as reliable as that drum-beating bunny, they perform day after day, season after season, year after year. The manufacturer has tried to kill them off a couple of times and apparently finally succeeded. So anyway I broke a skeg: It's a rod that attaches to the underside of the ski and holds what's called a skin (a wider, smoother surface especially good in deep snow) in place.

Simple job, I took it all apart, retrieved two of the three pieces where it broke (the other one is lost in the snow somewhere near the East Pole) and trucked on over to the dealer to buy a new one. Only guess what. They are not made any more and they have been out of stock for years. It's a helpless feeling. I looked at the two pieces and wondered if I could get them welded or manufacture a new one. The parts woman suggested I try the dealer in Fairbanks.

Compeau's had some. The parts woman there told me when she learned the maker was going out of business she bought a couple dozen pairs because of all the Tundras in use out in the woods from Fairbanks. So now I have a very expensive pair of them headed this way in the mail.

Later in the day, it being sunny and warm I went to the auto parts store to buy some of the miracle gunks it takes to put machines away for the summer and clean up the Jeep after a long winter. Among them I wanted to replace my can of LPS2 which after many years had lubricated its last bit of metal on my gear. Uh oh. Nothing in the display. For those who don't know LPS2 is a spray preservative and lubricant, similar to WD-40 but unlike the 40 it lubricates. The woman there (notice the number of women in jobs that have always been the domain of men?) told me they don't make it any more, haven't for maybe five years. She too bought a bunch of it when she learned the product would be discontinued and sold them from a bin in the front of the store, a bin that had long since been emptied. Another item I had learned to appreciate but no longer available.

Now this was the culmination of a day of paradigm shifts into barely related areas. It all started in the couple of hours before I fell asleep the night before. Ever since a trauma in my life several years ago, I have had to leave the TV on to keep me from wrestling the demons of that trauma and others that prevent sleep. The last few shows I watch are usually sitcoms so I don't have night terrors from all the violence and mayhem of the drama shows. But last night for three shows in a row, they were so bad I actually shut them off before the end, one after another, tired of the shouting, inane situations and unrealistic reactions to stupid plot gimmicks. At the time I wondered if I might be growing old and grumpy and intolerant. I decided, no, these were bad shows. Two I will probably never watch again, the third I have liked over the years and maybe I'll give it another chance. I decided the problem is with the writers, and that problem I decided was a dilution of talent because of all the networks and all the shows, there just aren't enough good writers to go around. Back when there were three channels or even ten, creativity was more concentrated and the result was better written shows.

All of that disruption did not foster an easy sleep and I woke up two hours later having experienced another shift. Mind you this is about 3 a.m. and I never fell back to sleep until after 8. I tried everything, ate a big breakfast, did 20 minutes on the elliptical, looked for better-written sitcoms (fortunately a couple of Sports Night reruns) and finally in this yearning for some sanity ended up on You Tube listening to 50s and early 60s girl group love songs and living in some memories for a while.

It was in that foray the whole experience came full circle even though the closure came more toward the beginning than the end of the day's events. The danger of these musical forays is iTunes is just a click or two away and over the course of the morning I bought about a dozen songs. Among them was The Eve of Destruction. I didn't even listen to the whole song before I bought it. But later on a drive to town it came up on the new playlist and the words started to hit home. There's a song in the show All That Jazz  named Everything Old is New Again and if ever there was a song to prove that, it was Eve of Destruction. That song could have been written yesterday, the words spoke so closely to events in the news today. At least one song (I know there are a lot more) had survived and remained relevant almost 50 years later.

In a striking irony, it is the wars that take us to the eve of destruction that also necessitate the development of the technology to replace limbs and treat other wounds of the soldiers returning from the bloody battlefields of the world. In simpler terms, while old model snowmachines suffer for a lack of spare parts, spare parts for humans are more available than ever, and many of them have applications for the older models at least slowing the decline into obsolescence of each human body. Even with continuing development, it still might be a good idea to cosy up to the parts lady ahead of time.

Now, if only Ski Doo Tundras, LPS2, television sitcoms, and yes this old soul, could find a way to grow old together in some kind of harmony that maintained their usefulness, wouldn't that be something? It can't happen too soon.

Meanwhile, I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that developments in the past reached the eve, but they never went past it and let's hope this eve will serve as warning as well and we can find a way to keep from going over the brink.

A COMMENT FROM FACEBOOK: Janice Edwards Lovely meditation on life and change, Tim. Great post!