Road trip gear

Realized today that we needed one important piece of gear for our road trip that begins tomorrow. What piece of gear might that be, you ask. I realized we simply could not do this trip without . . . . . . . a 12v cigarette lighter in our car.

Now before anyone goes off on some rant about smoking, etc., we don’t need it for lighting cigarettes. We need it to power the FM transmitter my sister and brother-in-law gave us for our i-pods. Our car did not come with a 12v power source in it like most cars do. It didn’t come with a lot of things in fact. So, at 5:15 tonight, I took my daughter out for an adventure to try to find a cigarette lighter and get it installed into our car.

One thing that happens in many cities in India is that all of the similar shops locate near each other. So, I headed for the ‘car accessories’ part of town. I pulled up in front of one of the more well-known places, hopped out with daughter in tow, and asked about the cigarette lighter.

I was told it was indeed possible, and in fact would only cost $3 and would take about 3-5 minutes to install. Now I have lived here long enough to know that IST (Indian Stretchable Time) can be a funny thing. I decided to try my luck and let them have a go at it. I handed my keys over.

About 3 minutes later (no exaggeration), a small, wirey young boy returned to the counter to inform me it was all done. I was first of all shocked, then skeptical. I went to the car to inspect the work. Not only was it done neatly and cleanly, but it turns out this guy had wired it the way I wanted as well, which is that it is not powered when the key is off, so as not to cause a drain on the battery if we inadvertently leave something plugged in overnight. I have to admit it looks like a factory install.

This is just one of the MANY things I love about living here. Things that would otherwise be costly, time consuming or simply not possible to get done in the preferred timeline are simple, quick, efficient and inexpensive. Of course the reverse can also be true, but that is a different entry altogether.