Short story: Giants lost, Rhinos lost, car died but was revived by my MacGuyver-like neighbor who saved the day with his auto-fu.
It was extreme!
If you want to read the long version check out the extended entry. Warning: the extended entry is long and rambly. You don’t really care that much.
Monday, the 25th, started badly.
On Sunday, my PRF team got smoked on what should have been an easy week, my Giants puked one out to the Lions, and my car wouldn’t start when we tried to go out to dinner on Sunday night.
Cut to Monday morning. It’s me, Michelle, Emma and Stella piling into Michelle’s Volvo wagon at 8:15. Since we’re down to one car I have to drop Michelle and Stella off at the baby center and then take Emma to her school, and then get to my parking deck to get to work. I hit my desk at 9:10am, a full 30 minutes later than usual. So I muddle though a fairly slow work day and I’m ready to hit the road at 4:30. Except that since I’m driving everyone in Michelle’s car I need to wait for Michelle to get off, which is at 5:30. So I eventually collect everyone and we’re heading home, with the plan being that we will run my car up to the garage right when we get home. It wouldn’t make sense to unpack the kids just to get them back in the car to drive a mile down the road. If you don’t have kids just trust me on that one.
Now, I know thismuch about cars, but when I see the battery meter dipping low I figure the car needs a charge. So I get out the jumper cabels and while I am trying to figure out the way to hook it up so I don’t blow up the battery my neighbor, Lee, walks over and waves me off. He’s a car guru. He runs a local lockout service and he’s just an all-around solid guy. Using his portable battery charger he figures out that my battery is fine and that the problem is probably with the corroded connector on the positive post of the battery. It’s so corroded that he can’t even get the screw holding it on to budge, so he cut it off. And then he went into his magic car bag and pulled out a new connector. And then he stripped the wires and hooked up the new connector. I might have looked less surprised if he had pulled a rabbit out his pants and whacked me on the head with it. Cars and their engines are a mystery to me. I am lucky to have Mr. Goodwrench living across the street.
I would also suggest that I am lucky that he didn’t pull a rabbit out of his pants.
Anyway, it took him 20 minutes to get my car running. That’s much better than the day (minimum) at the garage and the $100 (minimum) it would have cost me otherwise. Plus I got to get out of Michelle’s car (which she was glad to see) and back into my regular week. So it ended well.
I’m much better now.
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