My ride has been sidelined.
Two Fridays ago, I had a scary experience of vehicular distress. While driving home after dark on the Bayshore Freeway, my car overheated. I had to pull over and wait for a tow truck. I’m going on record to say that I sincerely disliked being stranded on the side of the road. Sitting in an inert car while cars whiz past at extremely high rates of speed not more than 10 feet from me was SO NOT FUN. Since then, the car has been in the shop on three separate occasions and will have to go back a 4th time sometime next week. What started as a radiator problem has devolved into an issue with the onboard diagnostics sensors.
Other than knowing to change my oil regularly, fill my tires with air and gas up before the tank reads empty, I will admit to being fairly clueless about the inner workings of my car. I am more than happy to pay someone to take care of it for me. Usually, I am uninterested in what is being done because it is done in the course of regularly scheduled maintenance.
Now repairs are another animal entirely. When the car “breaks”, I inevitably end up learning about some system or other. It’s not that I don’t enjoy learning about my car but it’s more that I am learning under duress. I once received a crash course on the exhaust system because I had to replace nearly every component in the system all in one go. I can’t say acquiring the knowledge made me happy but at least I understood why I needed both a working A and B pipe.
In eleven years of car ownership, this is my first experience with the cooling system. Kudos to the automotive gremlins for choosing a new system since God knows I hate to repeat myself. Unfortunately, this is not my first dance with OBD problems – curses to the gremlins for inviting OBD to the repair party!
Except for being stranded on the freeway, which was justifiably scary, this whole episode has been relatively benign. I am not discounting the expense and annoyance but in calmer moments, when my wallet isn’t bleeding and/or I am not waiting for a tardy bus, I must admit that these problems are actually good things. What I mean, and I don’t want my readers to misunderstand, is that everyone should be so lucky:
It’s my great fortune to own a car that I consider worth the expense to repair.
It’s my great fortune that I am able to afford the expense of the repairs.
It’s my great fortune that new friends provided emergency rides without complaint and with endearing alacrity.
As completely un-fun as this episode has been, I will repeat myself, everyone should be so lucky. Additionally, this episode has taught me that reliable transportation is a freedom that I shall never take for granted again.
Meanwhile, I (belatedly) introduced myself to the concept of public transportation and have made an uneasy peace with the unreliability of posted bus schedules. Go veg indeed.
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You should have done what I did -- have your car die on you in a Culver's parking lot a half mile from a friend's house. It's a totally different experience.
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