It could be the Excedrin I just took, but I'm feeling pretty good right now, in spite of the fantastic day I've had so far.
Sometime, maybe Friday, Berta's car started making a funny noise whenever you started to slow down. It was a strange kind of fluttering. Combined with the awful screeching that the car made when you turned sharply, I was sure it was a serious problem.
After suffering through the weekend with just my car (and let me save some article space to tell you how excited I am about Abby's habit of filling pockets and shoes with sandbox sand and climbing into my car for transport), we all got up early this morning to convey Berta's ailing transport to the repair shop. I started it up and drove it to the end of the block, and by that time, I knew something was very wrong.
I put the car in park and walked around the outside to see what was going on. The front passenger-side tire was completely flat.
Shanahan students whizzed by on their way to school while I pondered my next move in this building fiasco. (When does school start for these kids? They really push the limits driving down my street at 8am if school starts at 8am.) Instead of blocking up the building traffic, I sent Berta and Abby on to work and school, and used a lull in the traffic to back the car up into a reasonable parking space.
Most new cars have jacks built into them in a storage compartment somewhere, so I searched the car for the one in the CR-V. I remembered that CR-Vs have a table in the trunk, for what purpose other than simply having a table I can't say, and so I pulled up the carpet in the back. I lifted the table out of place, and found only the storage area (remind me that there is stuff in there, clothing, of interest), but noted that there was a label specifying "JACK" that didn't really point anywhere.
I pulled on the little metal loop affixed to one of the screws that fastened the plastic of the storage area to the car body. The screw ripped out. I think they're supposed to do that. I pulled out the other three and lifted the plastic, revealing - a jack!
Our neighbor across the street - I think his name is Dunn, a guy who I've never really been involved with - was very generous in offering his hydrolic jack to raise the car. Honestly, I don't like those cheapy screw jacks either, so I was glad for his assistance.
I pumped the jack up, lifting the car, and then removed the old tire. I rolled the spare into place, and lifted it a bit to fit it on the axle, but the bolts were already too low. The car wasn't jacked up high enough to get the new wheel on. And now, it wasn't high enough to put the old wheel back on, either.
I ended up sliding the old wheel under the axel so that I could remove the jack and prop it up with some bricks I retreived from the garage. After two tries (don't ask), I finally got the car up high enough to put on the spare.
"I'm going to need to rent a car," I told the guy who answered the phone at Enterprise. I spent quite a bit of time on hold, like 20-30 minutes, trying to get a car for at least the day, if not the duration of the repairs, which I imagined would be immense. While on hold, I invisioned the jovial mechanic at the desk of Goodyear laughing his jolly laugh, "That'll be $5 billion dollars - Ho ho ho!" There goes Christmas.
"Sorry, we won't have anything back in until one o'clock." Gee thanks. You'd think that a car rental company, whose chief business is essentially renting cars, would know well enough whether they had any cars available to be able to tell me so when I first quieried them. Whatever.
Berta came from work to meet me at the garage and cart me off to work. So begins the humiliating life of the suburbanite with no car.
Fortunately, a call from Goodyear revealed that the repairs were minor (less than $5 billion, but close), and they ended up completing them before noon. Berta picked me up again at work and we ate lunch at Wegman's after picking up the fixed car.
I turned sharply into the parking space in the Wegman's lot to the sound of a faint squeal from the tire area.
Lunch with a human (especially Berta) was fun, and I think I have finally figured out the secret of the cheap by-weight Chinese buffet. Noodles, not rice. Drain sauces. Take only half of what you think you can eat. Big bottled water.
Re-enter the world of the zen PHP coder and his personal conveyance and all is at peace.
