I was in a perfectly good mood. Kathy was trying on some clothes and I was pushing Taylor in the stroller. I ran into my friend Vicki Dykes who told me she was a regular reader of this blog. (Vicki, things went downhill after I saw you).
I decided to be a nice guy and take something Kathy had purchased to her vehicle. The side doors on a Honda Odyssey are electronic. In other words you just pull the handle and the door automatically slides open. Then you can pull the handle one time and it is supposed to close automatically. Or you can hit a button next to the steering wheel to open and close the side doors. I had no trouble opening the door. But I couldn’t get the door to close.
I knew it when we bought this stupid car. Way too many gadgets on it that have the potential to not work. My first response was to call Kathy from the parking lot on her cell phone in the mall. I asked her if there was a secret to closing the stupid door on her vehicle. She said she would come out and close it. In the meantime I gave the finger to a man and his wife who drove by and smiled at my dilemma. I was secretly hoping that Kathy would not be able to close it. I would really feel like an idiot if she walked out and closed the door with ease. Thank goodness she couldn’t close it either.
I called my son and told him his mother and I were in the parking lot at the mall with his daughter and we could not get the door to the van shut. His calm response made matters worse: “You ARE kidding aren’t you?”
I wasn’t.
He was about 20 minutes away and he told me that he and Tami were on the way. Of course as those 20 minutes were transpiring, I continued to work on the door as other amused rubberneckers rode by. I even noticed that Taylor was laughing. Kathy finally found a button that turned off the automatic mechanism of the door. I kept pulling the door an inch at a time and finally got the door to close. I called John and turned them around when they were about 3 minutes away.
Honda advertises their Odyssey saying that you will want to change your address when you experience the surprisingly opulent cabin. They fail to mention anything about their surprisingly un-opulent doors. They also advertise that the Odyssey won the best resale award last year. I’m sure they had a lot of data to pull from to figure that out. In other words, I’m sure a lot of folks were selling them.
Is anybody out there interested in buying a 2007 Honda Odyssey? Please hurry because my next ride in it will be to the Honda store.
And it ain't going to be pretty.
3 comments:
We have a Chrysler Town & Country that seems to be related to your car. After about 3-4 batteries,(all the bells & whistles run off your battery)my husband suggested that we use the old fashioned way of opening the doors by hand. After a month or so of this, no one in the family was strong enough to pull the door open. Thus, to the dealership and $800 later we learn you should not open the doors manually because it destroys the motorized door. So now we are back to buying batteries-cheaper than a door motor.
Apparently, you did not adjust the fluctuating actuator for the right handed north-south approach, rather than the generally accepted left handed east-west attitude. As for the incident leading to the middle digit lone extension with presentation to the passing motorists, they were merely observing their surroundings in case an anecdotal incident occurred which could later be related to the authorities or to a totally unrelated gathering of those paying for entertaining oratory. What would Eulan do?
I'm laughing at that last comment. Eulan would have been on a bicyle. He never would have been stupid enough to have a van with electronic doors.
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