NOTE TO SELF: When mechanic brother tells you what is wrong with the car - believe him.

My brother is a very good mechanic. (see pic below of him washing his car on his wedding day) He graduated at the top of his class and his professors were amazed at his skills, his attitude, all that good stuff. He is definitely one of my favorite people on earth - I feel bad now that I am adult for being so mean to him as a kid. Well, the last time we called about Walt (the nice white truck pictured above) he told us exactly what was wrong, and explained what part we needed to replace. It was not starting well - it was the "starter solenoid" which sounds to me more like an alien than a car part. Apparently that was much cheaper and easier to replace than the starter itself. Weeeeelll, Walt started feeling better and the problem seemed to have went away. So we ignored the solenoid issues. Mike asked if we fixed it, we told him it had been acting normally so we decided not to fix it. He laughed at us. SOOOO, of course yesterday when Paul was 45 min. north of Cincinnati checking out a campsite for the CSM kids, it wouldn't start. POO! Some nice man there helped him start the truck by "popping the clutch" whatever that means, and told him not to turn it off until he reached the mechanic's. Unfortunately the truck was VERY low on gas - so our dear friend AP drove up to the camp and followed him home in case it ran out of gas. We're lucky to have nice friends. So, the moral of the story is: listen to my bro. We have old cars. We need to be nice to them. Mike knows best.