As a surprise for my wife, I put a roof on our car

My wife @ecoinstante recently travelled for family reasons, and I stayed behind, home mostly alone which I haven't done in a while. While I am perfectly capable of feeding myself, I decided to work on getting something done that my wife has been complaining about for awhile, and I hadn't done for various reasons, time, money etc.

And that is getting a few things on the car fixed. The big one.... a roof. We had a leather tarp on top, but it didn't do much to keep us in the rain and after a rain would always have puddles built up on top.

But I couldn't just get a 'better one', I had to remodel the whole thing. Which I jumped into, getting a welder to put in the whole program after drawing it out and meeting with the 'tapicero'. I alluded to this in a previous post.

So once we got the whole welding the frame situation figured out and done, it was time to get the car over to the top tapicero in the town, the one the people go to in order to fix the problems left over from other people's work. He works with his son, and they keep pretty busy. The did assure me that the work slows down sometimes, but I guess this wasn't one of those times, I was third in line but they got to me within 3 days, and that made me happy.

I selected a material from a few options, I could have picked some more 'luxury' material, but I told him that we beat the hell out of this car and he nodded knowingly and recommended the 'working class' material. I said that sounded more like what I needed.

Of course along the way I also got the oil changed, cleaned the carburator and put in a new air filter, fixed the windshield wipers; some things I have had on my list for a little bit now. This thing is running like a charm now! There is still one tiny 'innard' fix on my list, a radiator hose that I don't quite like and would like to replace, we will see how soon I actually get it done though, for now I am super happy about this clean carb and how it sounds.

@ecoinstante was happy, and she's been showing it slowly more and more, especially now that its been raining. At first she smiled, and said it was nice. But as we have been driving around, she keeps commenting on it, clearly happy.

Then it started to rain. I think there is little in life more satisfying as a husband than knowing that you made your wife happy in ways she has trouble expressing. Its little comments here and there, the big smile on her face now when its raining and we are in the car.

Fast forward to yesterday, time to head into town. The neighbor had approached us about helping to take some platanos into town for sale. Little did we know that it would be so many!

Its funny how enclosing a space makes it bigger, but we fit so many things in the car yesterday. Trees and cuttings for her ecological group, a bunch of tools for a local craftsman that had finished up a job on our farm, and 18 bunches of Platanos.

We even got to test out the new luggage rack with its first real cargo, carefully positioned of course over the back muelles of the car.

So as they say, Happy Wife, Happy Life, and even though its been rainy, she's back and has been quite happy with me recently, which makes me happy. We took some selected members of her ecological group to the FAO forum recently, and here we are eating popsicles in the park in Lerida.

She sure does look happy. :)

Freedom and Friendship