The Scooter Saga Continues...

In what may be a major source of said frustration, the scooter debacle continues unabated. Luckily, after the latest episode yesterday, which reduced me to making screaming phone calls to my CT, asking her to yell at a scooter repairman in Chinese, the battery wiring problem seems to be fixed. Just to be sure, my CT asked me to bring my scooter to a shop in Da Li City, near where I work, to have it checked out by a more reliable mechanic. When Betty got wind of this, she sent me to her mechanic (a thoughtful idea, but sadly clear across town again), a friend of hers who spoke no English but would call her before making any repairs to the scooter.

Let me first say, that although it was a pain in the ass to find this guy, I like him already. He actually listened to the sound of the scooter, checked more than one place for a problem, and found a problem in development! So, two weeks from now when something else would have gone wrong, I may (fingers crossed here, folks) still be blissfully cruising Taichung City, artfully dodging insane blue trucks, and homicidal taxi drivers! Sadly, I have to have some more work done to the scooter in the next week, but it's quick, and not too expensive (about 3 USD a pop). It turns out the first mechanic really did sort out the battery problem, but I had some water in an oil tube. It should have been cleaned out by somebody at some point (and I'm not sure if I was supposed to know that or the other mechanics were) but it hadn't been (again not inspiring my confidence in Taiwanese mechanics), and now I have to have this specific type of oil changed every three days for about a week and a half or so. I guess it's better than getting stranded and having to replace some enormous thing that's blown off the back of the scooter.

Wish me luck.