Car Woes

I spent Father's Day morning sitting with my dad and J on the side of the road in 90-degree heat waiting for a tow truck driver. But it was okay because it's not like I was completely hung over and dying silently of dehydration from a bachelorette party the night before. Oh wait...

Midnight:

10:00 am:

I had gone to pick up J from work Saturday evening and he noticed the "Volt" sign was lit up on the dashboard. We knew that wasn't good, but I was steadily not looking at it in hopes that if I ignored it it would cease to exist. I'm such a good car owner! I'm like one step away from, "I didn't know you had to ADD oil to the car. So how do you unlock the engine?" After a brief consultation of the manual (which helpfully told us to drive to a Buick dealership as soon as possible), J correctly assessed the problem as a non-functioning alternator.

I promised my brother I would stop by a store for him to pick up a gift certificate, but as we drove slowly past, we realized it was closed and drove home instead. That's an important part of the story because as soon as we pulled into our driveway the car up and died. (And nowhere near the Buick dealership. Shit!) So the upside is that we weren't stranded in a parking lot in Cherry Creek, but of course we were now stranded at our house. To complicate matters, I was on my way to the bachelorette party and J had volunteered to be one of the chauffeurs for the evening. After some panicked phone calls and a loaner car, we eventually made it and the night went off splendidly (splendidly = full of delicious martinis).

The next day, it was back to dealing with poor Big Red. My dad came over--because what better way to celebrate Father's Day than by doing dad stuff like messing with broken cars--and after a failed attempt to charge the battery enough to make it to the shop, we called the tow truck. Here's a fun fact: if you're with someone who has AAA, they can activate their super AAA powers to help you and your car! Who knew! AAA is my new BFF.

The prognosis is bad: Big Red needs a new battery, a new alternator, and to top of the exciting bag of surprises, new brakes. I knew the day would come when I'd miss those cramped subway cars.