Strange Rituals and Cheat Codes

This last weekend, my wife and I said goodbye to the aging minivan that had been a fixture in our family for the last decade.  It was a Honda Odyssey, of course, and just as it had replaced the decade-old Honda Odyssey that came before it, so too was it replaced by a decade-newer, lower mileage used Honda Odyssey.  

I mean, I'd been hoping for a midlife convertible, but danged if minivans aren't just so relentlessly useful.  Where once it was for carrying kids and stuff, now it's for carrying elderly parents and stuff.  

The Van is dead, long live the Van.

The new van is a 2023, with just under 31K miles on it, and that means...even though it's a lower trim level...that it's brimming with features that are new to us.  Like, say, auto start/stop, that unjustly maligned system that saves owners five to seven percent at the pump.  I mean, sure, if you've been bought by the oil industry, it's a bad thing.  But for anyone who cares about pinching nickels, it's a great feature.

If it works.  Which it did not, not for the first few days of driving.  

Every time the engine should have shut down at a stop, it didn't, and instead flashed an alert that the "system wasn't charging."  We'd noticed it during the test drive, but figured it would resolve.  It did not.  It kept flashing the error, even after forty minutes of driving.  Even after an hour.  The engine was warmed up.  The alternator should have charged the battery fully.  Which meant that something somewhere was wrong.

There's a warranty on the vehicle for the first month, but I really didn't feel like taking it in if another solution could be found, so to owner's groups I went.  There, I found the usual kvetching and complaining and frustrations with dealerships.  Mechanics seemed at a loss, as did the manufacturer.  

But in all of that, there were claims of a strange and magical solution.

An owner by the name of BadWolfOdyssey (A Dr. Who reference, I assume) had discovered how to get the system working again, without a trip to a mechanic or dealer.  Dozens of commenters sang the praises of the method, swearing it worked perfectly for them.  

Here's what they did:

1. Drive the Van for fifteen minutes.  
2. Stop in a parking lot, checking that as you do so the error message is showing.  
3. Turn off the Van.  
4. Pull the hood release latch and open the hood.  
5. Get out, and fully prop the hood.  
6. Then get back into the Van, close the door, and turn it on again.  
7. A "your hood is open" alert shows.  
8. Turn off the engine, get out, and go shut the hood.  
9. Return to the Van, close your door, start it.
10. Hey presto, the system will work again. 

That sounded as mechanical as standing on one foot with your finger on your nose and saying "Start/Stop" seven times while hopping in a circle.  It felt like a secret cheat code for a video game.   It was wibbly wobbly, as one might expect from a Dr. Who enthusiast. 

I tried it on the way home from church on Sunday, and it worked like a charm.

Why?  It's not clear.  It likely interrupts whatever software glitch causes the error code in the first place, in the same way that breath control exercises can prevent hiccups.  Some sensor doesn't pick up a necessary state for reactivation, and the system locks, until you do the silicon age equivalent of giving it a good whack in just the right place.

It was, whichever way, a little bit delightful.  

If only there were similar solutions to other problems, ritual movements and arcane positionings that would reset the deeper failings in our glitchy human code.

If only.