So yesterday afternoon, I was driving down to hang out at Miss Shirley's with her, G-dog, and Little Miss Shirley. I'd come from another picnic, and I had about an hour and a half to kill before I was supposed to show up at Miss S.'s. So I decided to stop at Pentagon City and enjoy the air conditioning. I bought some shoes and some nail polish (one can never have too much of either) and, at about 4:30, went back to my car.
It started fine. Oh yes, the engine turned right over. And then it died. I tried a few times. I could get it to idle if I gave it gas, but as soon as I took my foot off the pedal, it stopped. I tried running it for a while like that, to see if I could, yknow, teach it to idle again, but no. G-dog, Miss Shirley, and Little Miss came over in the minivan and G-dog taught me how to check the air filter. Her fiance, a mechanic, was giving suggestions over the phone. Finally we decided I just had to get a tow - but G pointed out no tow truck was getting in the parking garage with its 7-foot clearance.
Well, G managed to get the car into gear (by starting it in reverse) and out of the garage (by shifting really fast). But by the time she got it to the outside parking lot, it was running fine, so we just drove the 20 miles back to my house with the Shirleys following behind. And Little Miss S has a cold, and it was getting to be past her bed time. I felt so bad.
It was incredibly hot yesterday, and my car had been kind of unhappy even before it stopped running, so I'd been turning the A/C on and off, and I was sooo sweaty and looking forward to getting into the pool at Miss Shirley's. As was everyone else, of course. S and Little Miss were in their swimsuits through the whole ordeal.
Let's hope Woody the Mechanic can figure out what's wrong. The car is about 20 miles short of 100,000.
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4 comments:
Having just laid my car to rest in a salvage yard between here and Minneapolis, I sincerely hope that your car turns out to be okay - or at least fixable for a not-so-large sum of money! During Tornado Fest 2005 (last Thursday), they noted that there were tornados in New Lisbon, and I cried out "That's where my car is!" like I was concerned about it getting blown away. I guess that's the only way it could really move anymore. That, or pushing.
Aw, that's sad. And what a bummer about it choosing to die while you were on the road. Sort of like mine dying while I was in Virginia, although I have faith in Woody the Mechanic.
It's such a dangerous season to be a car owned by me or people I know (in real life or blog-life). My dad suggested fixing Blazey the Blazer by cleaning the battery contacts (one of the few repairs I'm capable of doing myself). When that didn't do the trick, he told me that it's probably the "starter celenoid" or the "ignition switch" - I'm putting those in quotation marks because they're gibberish to me.
Yeah, I think I'm a car jinx. A few weeks ago I was driving my parents' car to hang out with these same friends in Virginia, and decided when I got there that I really ought to pop the hood and find the source of all that white smoke. Turned out my dad had forgotten to put the cap back on after he changed the oil. (That was a car problem even I could diagnose - oh, look, there's a hole with no lid.)
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