My Body’s “Service Engine Soon” Light Is On

My Venerable Road Warrior SUV’s “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” warning lit up about a month ago, a couple days after the guys at Zimbrick had just given it a little more than fifteen hundred bucks’ worth of TLC. The Road Warrior is just shy of turning a hundred thousand miles on the odometer and in a few months it will be 12 model years old.

The Venerable Road Warrior is as old as our wonderful purebred collie Shadow. Both were “born” in 2006. Our old gal Shadow was born at our breeder’s home in suburban Franklin, WI and we took her home when she was six months old. The Venerable Road Warrior was born at an assembly plant in Ramos Arzipe, Mexico, a couple hundred miles southwest of Laredo, TX and began life as a Hertz rent-a-car at the San Francisco airport.

It’s amazing how easy it is these days to find out things about your car’s history. I have no idea how it wound up on the lot at Zimbrick in Madison, where I bought it in ’08. At that time, it had only about 20K on the odometer.

As usual, I digress.

The idea for this post came when, the other day, I was helping my buddy Shadow navigate the seven stairs between my office and the next level of our quad-level home, where our kitchen, dining room, and “living room” are located. We found out in April that Shadow has degenerative myelopathy, a disease of the spinal cord that develops in some dogs. The spinal cord degeneration causes the dog to gradually lose control of the hindquarters, which makes going up stairs a challenge.

Eventually, and our vet tells us it’s likely a matter of months, perhaps weeks, Shadow will completely lose control of her back legs. She won’t be able to stand, much less navigate stairs. So – we’ll have to help her across the Rainbow Bridge, as pet-owners say, at that time.  Our vet assures us there’s no pain to the animal as the disease progresses, but it’s irreversible and untreatable.

Here's Shadow, In Her First Summer in '07

As I gently lifted Shadow’s butt a bit to help her ascend the stairs, I thought “you know, Shadow, we’ve got three things around here that have the ‘SERVICE ENGINE SOON’ light on: you, me, and the Venerable Road Warrior”.

About the same time our vet had made the diagnosis of degenerative myelopathy on Shadow, I was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. Usually it affects people with diabetes, which I do not have, but it’s pretty common, with about 3 million new cases every year. It’s a degeneration of the nerves in the hands and or feet that causes numbness and tingling. In my case, it’s the feet more than the hands. This whole thing started out for me when I told my primary care doc that I was having trouble keeping my balance. Long story short, I wound up sitting in front of a podiatrist who told me what was going on, and made the diagnosis.

The podiatrist explained that the balance issues come from the inability of the damaged nerves in my feet to communicate vital information to my brain – information that’s necessary to maintain your balance when standing. You can have surgery on your lower spinal cord to help mitigate the effects, but it’s risky, not at all a guaranteed fix, and has a long rehab.

Oh – and the reason for the “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” warning light on the Venerable Road Warrior? It could be a bad oxygen sensor. Or a bad catalytic converter. So, for right now, until I decide whether it’s worth it to stick another grand or so into the ’06 SUV, the warning light will be a permanent feature.

So I guess the three of us….me, Shadow, and the Venerable Road Warrior….will just wait to see what happens.

Why Does Madison Tolerate This Annual Auditory Assault?

I sometimes daydream that I am in possession of a high-powered drone, equipped with an infrared camera, possessing the capability of dropping a small but extremely powerful munition that could be detonated about 50 feet over the head of anyone blowing off fireworks, instantly rendering them temporarily deaf, causing their ears and nose to bleed profusely, leaving them with a monstrous headache, and shattering every piece of glass in their home.

This magnificent imaginary weapon would have such a highly-developed munition that its incredible blast of noise would be limited to a very small footprint, enabling highly localized pain and devastation.

Because Independence Day fell on a Tuesday this year, people apparently felt some sort of Constitutional right to blow off unlawful fireworks Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night, all day and night Tuesday, and even Wednesday night. Five or six nights of relentless aerial bombardment by these wannabe pyrotechnicians.

In my tiny Town of Madison suburban neighborhood, which consists of a handful of homes arranged like spokes of wheel around a huge cul-de-sac (which I believe is the largest cul-de-sac in Dane County), the noise this year was relentless.

The explosions drive my younger collie nuts, causing me to have to stay up until 2 AM comforting her until the drunken pyros pass out or run out of ammunition. There is one particular cretin, who lives about a quarter-mile northwest of us, who each year loads up on professional-grade aerial bombs, and sets them off, about ten minutes apart, from 8 PM until 2 AM. This year, he started Friday night and continued through Tuesday night.

This is not the kind of stuff you can buy at the myriad tents set up around Dane County a couple weeks in advance of Independence Day. This is the kind of stuff that is used in professional fireworks shows. It doesn’t create a beautiful shower of brilliant colors when it’s launched; it just ascends to about 200 feet and then explodes. Its sole purpose is to make an extremely loud noise.

If I step outside, I can hear the WHUMPH of the mortar being fired, which propels the noise-making device to a couple hundred feet. A couple seconds after the initial, dull WHUMPH, the aerial bomb detonates, with a deafening roar. I have one of those decibel meter apps on my iPhone, and the explosion registers 116 db.

Suffice to say it’s loud enough to scare the wits out of my younger collie. She’s skittish in thunderstorms but the fireworks really scare her. Her older “sister”, who is less high-strung and far more mellow, couldn’t care less. Her ears flick when the aerial bombs go off, but she’s unperturbed.

There’s another guy about a quarter-mile southeast of us, who delights in setting off similar, but not quite as loud, aerial bombs all night. Those “only” register 95 on my handy-dandy DbA app.

I get it. People love to blow off fireworks on Independence Day. I can deal with one night of staying up late, comforting my scared collie. But five or six nights? Come on.

I posted a short rant about it on my Facebook page, and a friend, who is an executive at The Capital Times, commented “I keep waiting for someone to politically organize on this single issue. The volume and frequency increase each year and there are tents set up in parking lots up and down Verona Road selling the things. I'm told that veterans with PTSD are often affected by the constant explosions. Actual firing ranges don't sound as bad.”

This year and last year on July 5^th, I phoned in a noise complaint to the cops, giving them the exact addresses from which the professional-grade stuff was being launched. (How do I know? Drive by in the daylight and observe the abundant wreckage of scorched cardboard and wrappings strewn about their yard.)

The dispatcher, both times, has asked me if I want “personal contact with an officer”, and I politely say “no, just arrest the lawbreakers and confiscate their unlawful contraband.”

Maybe some year, if enough people make their voices heard, the cops will do just that.