Gas Cap

When I picked up my car at the airport a few weeks ago I noticed that the paddle for the high beams had stopped working. It is now always on low beam. OK. Maybe a fuse is broken or I accidentally gave a sock to a car elf or something. I'll call Volvo some day. Later. Maybe. Eventually. Then the other day I needed gas. Normally I fill up when I'm between a quarter to a half, but this time I let the stocks dwindle until the cheery little dash board elf said, "You've got 50 miles left before you are stranded in a Mad Max wasteland!"

OK. I pulled into the local chuck wagon and fossil fuel station around when my date with certain death was 30 miles or so for a fill up. I got to the pumping station. I walked back to the pump. I had my payment app open and was about to enter the site locater info so I could get my ten cents a gallon off. Being retired I'm not made of money, you know.

My gas cap door was closed. Did I forget to push the, 'Open the gas bay door, Hal,' button? I didn't think so, but this sentence usually applies best to me after just the first three words. Alright. Back to the driver's door and a poke at the petrol button. Nothing. No reassuring Pop! as the door opened. Suspicious. Maybe it's frozen? I pushed on the door, hoping to loosen the latch, then back to the button. Nothing. I jammed a key in the door, in case it was just unable to spring open. Nope.

Hmm... 30 miles... That's all I had... 52,800 yards... 158,400 feet... 1,900,800 inches... Don't make me do metric.

Aghast, I drove the mile (1,760 yards, 5,280 feet, etc.) home. The dash board elf was non plussed. "You know I can't live on air, right?" I poked around some more with the gas cap door, thinking my attention to it would somehow wake it up or something. I looked in the manual. There was no, 'What to do when your gas door won't open,' section. Hmm. My reputation as, "You're the guy. Do something!" was fading fast. Luckily, there was nobody there to observe that obvious obsequiousness for me.

"Why don't you check the fuse?" said the dash board elf. Great. Somebody IS watching.

Fine. Back to the manual. There are about five fuse boxes in the Volvo XC70. Scanning the index brought me to where I thought this fuse must be. I thought. In one of the boxes under the glove compartment. Sorta. I hope? I couldn't find it for love nor money. Back to the manual. Move the carpet, it said. Huh? A fuse box is under a carpet? And my car doesn't routinely burst into flames why now? Oh. The carpet up the firewall just below the glove box. Why didn't you say that to begin with? Let's see. Readjust the rods in my spine... Stick my head under the glove compartment... Rip up the carpet... What the fuck am I looking at? I poked at some plastic, fuse box shaped things that had been swept under the rug. I didn't want to break anything expensive. Well, anything.

Now what? "Why don't you just..." "Oh, shut up!" I yelled at the car gnome. The manual was accurate, I was sure, if annoying, but not helpful. And who might be...? To the Internets!

I retreated into my Living room of Solace and made funny finger motions over my Laptop of Understanding, Google Edition. XC70 Volvo fuses where to find. That's as good a prayer as any I've uttered recently. And with equal results, it turned out. After the usual wrong turns like, No. I don't want to buy fuses; I don't want to buy a Volvo; I'm not interested in Volvo fusion sex (though I bookmarked that one,) I found some discussions on fuses in Volvos. Great.

YouTube will tell you everything! Like where to find the fusebox in a Volvo, for instance.

Back to the car! Readjust my spine! Rip up the carpet! After identifying the proper fuse box, I attempted to open it, as per instructions. As I expected, the instructions to 'squeeze the tabs and pull open the box' didn't work as advertised. I managed to get the smaller, incorrect box open, so I knew it could be done. But opening the larger box, which contained a galaxy of fuses, one supposedly mine, alluded me.

"You sure it's a fuse?" "Oh, fuck off! You're the one who said to check the fuses in the first place." Why did I buy the Extended Elf feature, anyway?

No, I wasn't sure it was a fuse or how I would know one way or another even if I got the fuse box open and was staring them all in the face! It was just a working hypothesis suggested to me by a soon to be not working elf.

Back inside. Last ditch effort before having the car towed to Volvo in East Hartford. ACCESS. THINKING MACHINE. INTERNET. GOOGLE. SEARCH: "Volvo XC70 gas dour won't open." It informed me that I misspelled 'door' but it knew what I was talking about, anyway, Carbon Crapbag. Just shut up and bring me the results, willya? You're worse than that Nazi of a nuisance in the driveway!

Hmm. There are several items on Volvo owners who suddenly, usually with nearly empty gas tanks on a deserted road in Maine while canoeing on a river in Tennessee and hearing banjos, can't open their gas caps. I wouldn't think there'd be a lot of that. Who knew?

One consistent thread, abruptly cut off in screams, said something about locking and unlocking the car using the key fob. Curious. Well, since the world is run by thinking machines and unthinking elves, a perplexingly unlikely thing as this must happen eventually. Why not now?

I went back outside, shut the doors, locked and unlocked the doors from the key fob, opened the door, pressed the gas button, and went to the stable door. Locked tight as Fort Knox. I tried several combinations. Locking while inside... Locking while outside... Locking while under the influence... Locking while under the car... Making sure to lock and unlock all doors including that one that goes to the dungeon... No dice. I might as well have been sacrificing chickens. Ovlov (that's what I decided to call the car elf) looked on, amused. Hmm. If the Norse gods want a sacrifice, maybe I could offer him...? No. The car would probably go straight to Hel. And I can't spend the time hanging from a tree. I've got places to be. Plus I'm outa gas.

Alright. One last, last check on the Wisdom of Odin before I despair. Buried in a Google article someone makes an off handed reference to using the emergency cable to manually open the gas cap door. Huh? The emergency what to do who to where, now? That's brilliant! Next they'll say they have a spare horse in the trunk!

The emergency latch lifter can be found within the access panel to the rear right tail lights.

I will kiss the engineer in Sweden who designed that who has a cute wife or daughter that I can kiss instead, unless the engineer in question is a cute female, straight, and doesn't have the #MeToo app perpetually open on her iPhone. God. Metaphors used to so much easier.

So, a-trawling I went. Into the trunk. Luckily the electronics for the hatch door worked. Technically I don't have a trunk, my car being a station wagon, or 'sports wagon,' as Ovlov tells me. Never mind. An obnoxious elf by any other name... He flipped me off. I couldn't find any failsafe release cord behind the panel in the back, though it was easier to access than the one under the passenger foot rest. It was just insulation and light bulb sockets. I reached in as far as I could and swept around, trying to think where I would be if I was an emergency release thingy. Nada. OK. Time for a guy's worst nightmare. Asking For Help!

So I called Volvo and asked for their service department. After an acceptable amount of Muzac and advertising I got a service rep. I explained my situation to her and what I had done to try to rectify it and she was very helpful. By this time I was hovering around the back of my car looking for a gas door ejection cord and trying to figure out how I could get my car the twenty miles to East Hartford on the 30 quote-unquote miles I had left in the beast. She asked some pertinent questions to home in on the issue, one being the make and model of the car. This time I checked the back of the car, seeing as I was standing there and all. It turns out that my car is not a XC70, but a V60-T5. I have the wrong manual, imagine that? Groan. I expected to hear her say that that model lacks all of the cool, fail safe features, is prone to significant failure at inappropriate and ironic times, and comes with sarcastic car elves pre-installed.

No. Except for the last one. I checked one last time for the pull cord in the panel pocket and, surprise, surprise! I found it. It was nestled in the insulation, or maybe Ovlov had hidden it. Bastard. A little tug and the gas cap was liberated!

Great! I thanked the service rep, who had been very helpful, and made an appointment for the next day to address both of my problems electric. And I swiftly drove the 5,000 some odd feet to the gas station and pumped over 15 gallons of the sweet stull into my car at the local Cumbies. Drink that and shut up, Ovlov.

Closure

After an hour of checking, a service rep told me that the problem was the switch on my dash board. They didn't have one in stock but would have one tomorrow. I can bring the car back in any time. "Is that the one where Ovlov lives?" I asked. "What?" "Ovlov." "Who?" "The car elf in the dashboard..." "OK..." "He kept sending me off on wild goose chases." "I can bring you to our psych-I mean, service manager..." "If you think it will help..." "It will get you away from me..." "Though an elf upgrade might be in order." "You're scaring me." "Tell me about it." "I'll get back to you."

I'll be back tomorrow. I just hope they replace that elf!