One little pin...
- Victoria
- Aug 31, 2020
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 26, 2021
I know I've written about how I'm preparing to thru hike the East Coast Trail but I don't think I've actually given much more details than that. I started a new job this February, it wasn't one that I as excited for, it was just good money. I didn't apply for it, I was recruited because someone I had previously worked with was an employee there. When covid hit and we were all temporarily laid off, I had a strong feeling that I wasn't going to be asked back. I knew that there were going to be a lot of financial repercussions and I'd only been there a little over two weeks so I hadn't proven myself yet.
I got a part time job as a nanny to tide me over since so much of Nova Scotia closed due to covid. I was only working about 20 hours a week which was a huge difference from having three jobs for the past years. For a while, trails were closed and I had to stay in my neighborhood. I focused a lot on biking, yoga and going for walks around my apartment building. As soon as trails reopened though, I dove into hiking on my spare time. I was talking to a friend one day and they commented on how much I hiked and said they could imagine me going on a long hike. I told them I'd always kind of dreamed of doing that but financially and time-wise I didn't think it would play out.
Then I had a realization, a total eye opening, freeze me in my spot realization. I didn't have a job, it was socially acceptable that I didn't have one at the moment. Most of my bills, my big financial burdens were deferred thanks to covid. My lease was ending at the end of August. I could do it.
I could really do it.
Once I realized that fate had perfectly lined up to give me this opportunity, there was no getting it out of my mind. I had to do it. I had to take advantage of this once in a lifetime chance. Soon covid would be gone, my bills would be due again and I'd need a full time job. But right now, I could do it.
I started planning immediately, and packing. I went through everything I owned on my spare time. I made countless drives to my favorite local thrift shop. I gave friends things they wanted, sold all my furniture and valuables and began to significantly reduce what I owned.
Saturday morning I made my last trip to the valley to drop off items for storage. My friend Sam has space in her basement, so I was packing everything into storage totes to leave there. This was to be my last run with three totes and then everything was going to be done. All that would be left with me was what I would need for Newfoundland.

I had an appointment set at 4 PM to hand over the keys to my apartment. I planned on leaving the valley around one so that I would still have time to load up the last trip to donate and the last trip to a friend in the city.
I managed to leave Sam’s place on time, somewhat proud of that because she has three children and I often get distracted. As I was getting onto the highway I went to put my car into fifth year, and it kind of popped out. I put it back into fourth gear and continued to accelerate up the on-ramp but realized that it kind of popped out of fourth gear too. I kept trying all the different gears trying to figure out what was going on. It seemed like I could go into the gear and the gear would engage and I could accelerate but there was too much free play. My RPMs were also all over the place. I put it into sixth gear on the highway and was doing 100 but my RPMs were up at 4000.
I realized that something really strange was happening so I called my younger brother as he is a mechanic. I was trying to explain to him what was happening and he didn’t really seem to understand it. I had taken the next exit off the highway already. Since I was in the valley and it’s small empty roads we did a video call and I showed him what the gear shift was doing. Being a delightful younger brother he just laughed and told me he didn’t know what was happening.
I called my dealer back in the city but unfortunately their service department closed at one. I called all the other Hyundai dealers in Halifax and they also all closed their service department at one. So I made the call to go to the local Canadian tire. My brother didn’t think it was safe to drive back to the city without having an appointment lined up.
Driving to Canadian tire to get it checked out I really realized that something was really strange. When I went into first gear even though I could still get going it felt more like I was starting from third gear or something. It really took effort and balance of the clutch and gas to get going. And I could stay in first gear and not have to shift at all.
I also cried the entire drive to Canadian tire. I immediately jumped to worst case scenario and imagined this being a huge expensive and hard to fix problem. I had plans with two friends to leave the city at 8 AM on Sunday. We were driving Cape Breton to do an overnight hike. And then I also had my ferry booked for Monday night and if I had to cancel that I would have to cancel my hostel reservation too. The combination of being in the middle of moving apartments, especially when I don’t have another apartment that I’m moving into. Add that to planning on living on the road and out of my car while camping for the next month in another province really just pushed me over the edge.
The first mechanic I talked to at Canadian tire didn’t really understand what I was saying. He came out and took a look at the car and had no clue. The second mechanic looked under the hood while I shifted gears and said everything looked like it was working. But then when he sat in the car and played with it, he could feel that it wasn’t right. He went to talk to a third mechanic and this mechanic said he had something like this happened to his car once. They asked me how many kilometers my car had on it, and I said it’s not even three years old, I only have 36,000 kilometers on it. The issue the mechanic had happen to his car was when it had 300,000 km on and was quite old.
He pulled up my gearshift mechanism and looked in it and sure enough it was this issue the had on his ancient car. In simple terms, I somehow lost my shift linkage. There is this tiny little pin as you can see in this picture, that allows me to change gears.

Since it fell off, anytime I went to any gear it went into fourth because that was what I was in when I lost the pin. If there any mechanics reading this feel free to chime in if you can make a better explanation. The way he explained it to me was that my car lost its ability to actually change gears. So when I went into first I was actually going to fourth, and if I went into second I was also still going into fourth. He reattached a new pin and the problem was solved.
It was a sensation of immediate relief since I would’ve potentially been out hundreds of dollars if it was more serious problem. I had people relying on me to go to Cape Breton the next day so I need it fixed immediately. They didn’t even charge me since it ended up being such an easy fix.
Have you had your car breakdown in a crazy way, and it ended up being extremely simple to fix?
Glad it got fixed