How I Learned an Important Lesson Fixing an Old Truck with an Olympic Hopeful

Complex problems often have the most basic solutions

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Image by Walter Rhein

Thirty years ago, an Australian friend of mine jumped on a plane and came to Wisconsin to spend the winter. He exchanged the sun, sand, and waves for biting snow and brutal cold.

Clark aspired to make Australia’s national team as a cross-country skier. He was in pursuit of the Olympics, and Wisconsin allowed him an ideal place to train during the Australian summer.

We dreamed the same way kids in their yards fantasize about throwing a touchdown in the closing seconds of the Super Bowl. I never got close to any national team, but following that path showed me the way out of my hometown.

Clark had ambition, but he didn’t have money. When money is lacking you can make do with ingenuity. The first thing Clark did when he arrived was purchase an old pickup truck for $200. He looked at me with his crooked smile and said, “It’s a whole lot cheaper than paying rental fees.”

The trick was keeping it on the road.

When the truck broke down

I accompanied Clark on many adventures. People need a pursuit of passion. You need to race and feel the thrill of speed. You need to keep track of your progress so you can perceive that you’re improving.

Dedicating yourself to a dream helps push aside the anxiety of life. You don’t know what you’re doing, but you hope that good things will happen if you work hard. The thought of the Olympics is a worthy goal, even if you never really get all that close.

Clark and I would head up to the trail and ski ourselves to exhaustion. The old red/orange pickup would start up and take us home. One day it didn’t start, and I went on to learn something that’s stayed with me.

Working on an engine with frozen hands

The truck rolled off the assembly line in 1972. It looked like it had rusted together into one uniform piece. The bumper, the body, and even the wheels were all the same color.

I remember the first time Clark and I looked at the engine. It was ten degrees below zero and we’d just skied thirty miles. We stood shivering in the parking lot, our hands already numb. Wrestling with rusted metal was the last thing either of us wanted.

I hadn’t worked on cars very much, but Clark was hopeless. Still, even he knew enough to recognize that the motor looked strange.

“Where’s the rest of it?” he asked.

Time capsules

Though we don’t often notice, we’re surrounded by time capsules. Today, I put on a jacket that had a special pocket sewn in for a cell phone. The pocket is about the right size for a candy bar because that’s how big cell phones were when the jacket was made.

The world changes fast, but there are things you have to track with data points or they will get lost in the flow of time.

Most of the motor on Clark’s truck seemed to be missing. We stood there shivering, trying to figure out the problem. Had some vital component rusted loose and dropped down through the chassis to skitter across the highway? Had we left pieces all over the road?

“You can see right down to the ground,” I said. There were major gaps all through the engine. We could see the packed snow of the parking lot below.

A car from simpler times

First I felt desperate. But there’s something about being exhausted in freezing cold weather that brings clarity. It only took a moment to solve the riddle.

“I get it,” I said, “The engine isn’t missing anything. When it was built, all that extra stuff didn’t exist. Over the years, engineers have filled in all that space with contraptions and accessories to improve overall performance.”

Clark looked at me with an expression of relief. “Yeah, that sounds logical.”

I became kind of amused by the idea. “This old truck might not be as reliable or as comfortable as a modern car, but it will get you down the road.”

“Dang right,” Clark said before adding, “When it will start.”

Celebrate your victories

But we weren’t discouraged, quite the opposite. Now we had some direction, and one idea flowed into another. “If the truck is basic, then the repair should be basic. Let’s start with the battery.”

The battery was easy to find. In a modern car, the battery is often camouflaged beneath a random assortment of hoses, cables, and plastic shields. In Clark’s truck, the battery stuck out like the last surviving house on a shoreline after a hurricane.

Fortunately, Clark had some tools. We were able to clean off the terminals and then refasten and tighten the cables. Fingers crossed, Clark gave the motor a try and this time it turned over. A little while later we had the heater on so we could stop shivering.

Tinkering with the car became part of our routine. We found the frayed remains of some sort of belt, so we installed a new one. We tightened up loose connections. It was still cheaper than a rental car, and we began to indulge in the more practical fantasy of becoming mechanics.

Lingering memories

There are times when I still think about going on ski adventures with Clark. He went on to spend some time on Australia’s national team, but he never made the Olympics. Instead, he got married, had some kids, and is quite content with his life. When his trip to Wisconsin ended, he sold the truck to a farmer and recuperated his $200.

Even to this day, whenever I encounter a situation that seems overwhelming, I remember popping the hood of that pickup truck to look upon an engine that seemed to only be half there. We live in a world of superfluous complexities. When you come right down to it, many of the things that cause us anxiety really don’t matter.

They’re like pieces of an engine you can discard and still go merrily down the road. There’s value in learning how to isolate the one or two critical elements that will help you achieve your objective. We are so tormented by trivialities that we miss the larger picture.

There is a basic concept at the root of all complexity

Even today, there are times when I look upon a problem and it’s as if my mind superimposes the image of that basic truck engine as a reminder. We have to overcome the paralysis of uncertainty.

Seek a simple solution. Try it. Repeat the process until you succeed. Take action!

It’s like waking up to a thousand work emails the day after you quit your job. At first, you’re confounded by the task before you. Then you remember that all you have to do is hit “select all” followed by “delete.”

We’re more equipped to handle the challenges of the world than we think. We just have to recognize the difference between problems that must be overcome and problems that can be bypassed.

Don’t waste time fretting over every detail. Just get the car started so you can get back on the road.

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