Jamie Fehr

Car woes, the first part, covers what happened on Saturday. Less fortunately for myself, that first episode was just to be the birthing pains with much more struggle on the horizon. You know what they say, when it rains it pours.

Originally, the plan was that I would be taking my grandma’s Chrysler Pacifica back to Canada where it is to be sold. That still is the plan it’s just that when I uncovered it yesterday afternoon turned the key in the ignition I received no response from the motor. Minor troubles at best I thought and a quick inspection revealed that the car had been parked not only with the battery connected and the lights during the entire duration of the two months, the interior lights as well had been left illuminated.

The battery was quite obviously dead.

We asked the neighbors for a boost and they were glad to oblige. A friendly, older gentlemen pulled his truck around back and stretched his cables from the truck to our car, but it was to no avail. The car was now responding to a turn of the ignition with that dreaded clicking noise. It was noted progress but we were still a long ways off from driving.

So we called a tow truck who arrived a mere hour later. He also stretched out his cables from his formidably sized truck to our relatively puny car and this time the car roared to life. We said thank you. He left. And I moved the car from it’s dormant position in the back house and the fence to a more convenient location in the driveway.

It was about at that point when I decided that it was a bit hot in the car and proceeded to turn on the air conditioning. Nothing. The car died. How very inconvenient I thought to myself. What shall I do now. The only logical thing to do would be to try and boost it again.

Instead of calling a tow truck we petitioned a different neighbor for their help and they were also glad to oblige. Their Jeep Liberty however also proved to be insufficient to cause any kind of response from the engine of the Pacifica.

We called the Tow Truck again.

Some forty minutes later the same driver showed up and shook his head. He then whipped out the cables and moments thereafter the Pacifica was purring along pleasantly. At that point I felt that it would be prudent to take it out on the interstate and work it some that the alternator might have ample opportunity to charge the battery better and both my grandma and the tow-truck driver agreed. My grandma and I hopped in and went for a ride.

Another forty minutes later I was stopped at a set of lights waiting to make a left hand turn when I decided that I would like to roll up my window. I was half way through the operation when the car died in the intersection. Now this is really quite inconvenient I said to myself quite audibly.

I then proceed to use the natural forces of man and gravity to get the car parked in the lot of the nearest Seven-Eleven (Texans, as far as I have been able to discern are quite helpful people) where we again called a tow truck. After twenty minutes of negotiating we were told to sit tight for 45 minutes until the tow truck could haul our car to a garage.

We waited. He showed up. We helped him load the car. We took a taxi home. And now, a full day later, the garage still hasn’t even looked at the car. I hope the repair doesn’t take long, I have got a whole lot of kilometers to traverse yet this summer.