Maintenance
The beautiful thing about maintenance is when it gives peace of mind. After checking that I won't encounter rain in the next days, the first thing I did was to unwrap the foil on the hanggliders.
Water had gotten under the foil and had been sitting like this for almost a month. I had been scared that the hanggliders might have started rotting or might never dry up again, but with the sun and the wind today they dried up much faster than I expected and nothing seems to have rotten.
Then, with the hanggliders off the roof I could finally completely open the bonnet, take out the reserve wheel and look at the speedometer axle. I also found a hollow hazelnut behind the reserve wheel and I knew immediately who hadn't cleaned up there.
I placed my phone to film the speedometer and spun the axle just to get a feel for how fast it usually spins. My feeling is that the chirping sound that keeps distracting me must come from the inside of the speedometer and not from the axle, but now that I sprayed some oil into the axle I guess I'll know as soon as I continue driving. One step at a time.
I also loosened the drivers door, propped it up with a stick and tightened it again. Not a big deal but the air whistling through the door seal on the highway has been distracting me for the last few thousand kilometers. Now the door closes really tightly and when I unlock it, it springs open and I like the feeling of that and am curious to see if the wind noise on the highway will be gone.
I'm glad that I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this process of doing the things that are not essential to keep the car running but essential for my peace of mind. Because even if these sounds don't mean anything important they still might distract from other important sounds.
I also, for whatever reason, really liked getting my hands dirty again. And then washing them at the cafe.