Four days ago my serpentine belt started squeaking a little, then a bit more. Last night it was a racket. I’ve looked at it seemingly a dozen times though and it keeps looking perfectly okay for a used belt with plenty of serviceable life yet.

Last night I got tired of the noise and bought a little can of belt dressing. This made the noise go away and I was hoping I could make it back to my home base area, where I can find a driveway and a helpful assistant so I can easily change it and do a deeper inspection for why it’s making noise. But this morning I was rudely introduced to a greater and highly expedited need for attention.

While pulling up to the library I’ve stolen internet access from the last couple days I started hearing something flapping around under the hood.  “Oh, expletive.” I quickly get a parking spot, open the hood and expecting the worst I was actually somewhat relieved. My mind had been spinning a million miles an hour… “where was that auto parts store I saw… could I do this on my own… how could I scam someone’s assistance… what would a shop charge… is there anyone I know, even remotely, that I could call who isn’t a hundreds of miles away…”

I didn’t have the gumption to get to far into this first thing in the morning but my quick examination showed that the belt had jumped a groove on the AC compressor and was wearing badly on the far side of the belt. Why this didn’t show before I don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t notice, but it’s a sure bet it was causing some foul noises. And there are a couple of frays visible on that side that knocked off the engagement wires for the AC clutch so that’s probably the racket I heard right before parking. I hope.

Ideally I’d get a new belt on there. But I’m hoping that maybe I can wait until I’m about another 90 minutes closer to my home base area so that I can have help putting the new belt on. I know from experience that I don’t have the upper body strength to get the tensioner sufficiently moved to allow a belt to get on. Not to mention that it’s nice to have two hand when positioning a belt so an assistant is quite handy.

I’ve though about just looking sad and pathetic and female and blond and playing that trump card outside the local auto parts store. I’m in a really nice town and I’m sure someone would help. But I’m perhaps a little too independent to ask such favors and I hate playing down my abilities. So maybe I’ll just try it myself first and see what super human strength I can come up with. The worst case scenario is getting one of the constructions guys next door to the library to help for a couple minutes. Even if I need to slip then a fiver it’ll be well worth it.

I need to get it in my head, at some point, that other people might actually feel the same grand satisfaction when doing something altruistic for another person. Recently I changed someone’s battery for nothing more than a thanks and I was quite happy with the exchange. But I’m not one to ask for such things. I was brought up to just do things myself and not bother other people with my problems. But perhaps I should learn to allow others the joys of helping someone in need.

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