The Golf Cart Incident Part I

Monday we went over to our cabin on a nearby island. The idea was to visit with old neighbours, take a quick walk and winterize the place. I hadn't been over to the cabin in five or six years and while it looked similar as we approached the dock, things had changed. They were small differences but I still noticed. The old comfy pull-out couch I was used to lazing on in the sun was gone. Replaced by a newer version. The place looked smaller, the walls were bare of paintings.

The trip over was not pretty though. In fact, it was freezing. The sky was clouded over when I had expected a nice day. The sea was almost black and inside the cabin was just as cold as outside. But as soon as we lit a fire, the cabin became cozy. Lunch was leftover turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce and stuffing.

We had planned to go for a walk when a neighbour came over to offer her golf cart as a means of transportation. At this point I started to dry wash my hands. I've never driven a golf cart before and here was my chance. So while we let the hot water tank drain, the four of us hopped on the cart. We checked out a new house that looked like a giant church being built and had just gotten around the corner when the battery died.

What? We'd only been on the thing five minutes. How could this happen and why didn't our neighbour warn us? More importantly, was I going to miss out on my chance to drive the thing? After several incredulous exclamations we checked under the hood several times as we could miraculously fix the problem. Did the lights work? Yup. What about the connections? Seem fine, though some looked a bit corroded.

At this point I started to panic. The thing really did seem to be dead and now we had to decide who would run back to tell the neighbour and who would stay with the cart and kick its tires in frustration. In the end we stupidly decided to push the thing back. Of course, this meant going back up the hill we'd come from. After several minutes of grunting and sweating we had the darn thing back up at the top and the neighbour gave the thing a once over.

She couldn't seem to find anything out of place. That is, until I pointed out a connection that seemed to be growing some psychedelic green funk. Turns out that corrosion had eaten through the copper wires that provided contact for the battery.

Aha! My deductive skills and reasoning had perhaps saved the day. I could only cross my fingers when our neighbour said she'd seen another connector hanging up by the fire hall. But, that was back the way we had come. So my poor uncle hops on an old bike, the kind with only one gear, and pedals like mad back down the hill.

Will he come back with the connector? Will he come back at all? You'll have to wait until Friday to find out.