Last week while Jenn was out of town, I had ordered a hitch to be mounted on the back of the Highlander. It arrived but was too heavy and awkward for my little man arms to lift, hold and bolt into place all by my lonesome it had to wait. Yesterday, the weather was extremely nice for a Saturday afternoon in August and it was decided today was the day to get hitched once again.
Now the reason I decided to have one delivered to the house and not "professionally" installed by a local dealer was the labor rates. More than one company quoted me ~$150 to have it installed. I stopped calling after that and watched a Youtube video. How hard could it, I just watched it on youtube.
The instructions provided with the hitch stated a professional install would take approximately 20 minutes while a novice install would take 40 minutes. After crawling up and under the rear of the car to make sure I knew which were the appropriate holes to be filling with my bolts, I decided 20 minutes was certainly achievable. I laid out the toolbox to find I had misplaced one of my ratchets. Of course it was the one I needed to install this hitch in 20 minutes or less.
A quick run to the local Home Depot store was now necessary. I entered the store with a very short list of needs and a long list of "needs." Some of you may call those "needs" "wants" and I could get go on to explain to you the differences between "needs" and "wants" but its a losing battle. You just wouldn't understand if you don't already get it. Somehow, I left the store with only those needs and nothing from the "needs" list. This was a first for me. One that must mark a new level of maturity or just an extreme amount of focus on the task at hand; install in less than 20 minutes.
Once back at home with all the appropriate tools in hand, Jenn was summoned to come out to help and the timer was started. From there, the job went by in a flash. We crawled under the car, lifted it into place, started the bolts in the holes and tightened those bad boys down. 12 minutes and we were done.
We didn't even have to use a 2x4 like the "professional" in the youtube video. Jenn's joking reply was that we obviously did something wrong if we didn't have to use one. With the utmost confidence in my ability to do simple tasks, I offered to go out and hit the hitch with a 2x4 if it would make her feel better. Having seen my mad pinata striking skills and not wanting her vehicle dented, Jenn asked that I not swing a 2x4 in the vicinity of the hitch or car. I can't say that I blame her.