satan is my motor
ETA: i wrote this last night while i was still in oneonta. i'm home now. i'm alive. i made it back in time to go to uno's with people from work. phew.
henceforth, this july 4th weekend shall be known as the Weekend of Car-Related Annoyance (WCRA). yes, it is still the weekend for me. and i have never been more pissed about such a thing.
it all started last week when i decided to get an oil change before my trip to ithaca. i was going to have the guys at the BP station where i park do it thursday, but i forgot, so as i trotted off to the office friday morning i had to tell the old middle eastern dude with the limp who doesn't speak english very well to ask the mechanic to do it that day. this time i was smart and left my work phone number with them instead of my cell, because although we're not really supposed to take personal calls during work hours, i figured this was important - i needed to make sure my car was running before i set off on my several-hundred-mile journey.
and lo and behold, midway into the morning i got a call from the mechanic, a pimply-faced guy probably not much older than myself, who said that my front struts were rotted out. did i know that? no, i did not know that, i told him. i didn't really know what front struts were, to tell the truth, but i didn't mention that. he said he could fix it for a cool 500 dollars. fine, i told him. that was most of the paycheck i'd gotten the day before, but the car was important.
later in the day he called me again, saying that two of my tires had leather cracks and needed to be replaced lest the leather break and strip off on the road. i assented to this, though it brought my total up to roughly 900 dollars. at this point i decided it was time to break down and call my dad, who had promised me long ago that if i couldn't afford to maintain my car, he would help me out. he was very understanding.
so, thinking that everything was peachy, i practically skipped down to the gas station at 3:00 (i had planned to leave early on this day from the inception of my plan, but on tuesday of last week the announcement was made that the whole office would close at 3:00 for the holiday, so i didn't have to take short lunches to make up the time), paid for my car, and sped off onto the mass pike towards ithaca.
everything went fine for the first five hours or so. i listened to weezer, stopped for gas and a huge piece of greasy pizza at one of the rest stations, and enjoyed the beautiful day and evening. at around 8:00, though, i was on I-88 near cobleskill with the cruise control on when i suddenly hit a bump, and the check engine and VDC off lights came on. "oh," thought i. "that could be bad."
i mashed the VDC off button a few times to see if anything changed, and pulled over to check if the gas cap was loose. negative. so i pulled out the owner's manual to see what advice it had to offer; it informed me that if both these lights were on in a steady (non-blinking) fashion, i had an emission system issue and/or engine malfunction, and that i should refrain from continued operation of the vehicle.
"fuck," i thought. actually, i may have said this out loud. i wasn't very keen on sitting on the shoulder of the interstate for long periods of time, though, so i drove a little further to the next exit and found myself in rustic howe's cave, new york, so named because in it there is a cave, a tourist trap related to the cave, and very little else. i stopped in the parking lot of a motel, and after much reviewing of the facts, called AAA.
in retrospect, i am glad that i have AAA, because they hooked me up with a tow truck when i was scatterbrained and freaking out. but i am not glad that i didn't have the foresight to get a "plus" account, because the one i have only covers 5 miles of towing, and the nearest subaru dealership was 44 miles away in oneonta. the tow truck was operated by a nice guy named bill and his 9- or 10-year-old son billy, though, and together we passed the ride in quiet reflection punctuated by periods of not especially awkward small talk. when we got to the dealership i gave up all hope of using normal methods of payment and pulled out my credit card.
after bill and billy took off, i waited until 10:00 for kate, who had graciously agreed to come rescue me. i couldn't find a drop chute for my car key, though, so i took it with me, along with all items of value that were in my car (CDs, GPS, etc.), back to kate's new apartment in lansing.
at that point the weekend got a lot less stressful, because we knew there was nothing to do about the car but wait for the dealership to open. we had a lot of fun saturday and sunday; saturday night kate's boyfriend jake and one of her wiccan friends came over and we had a mostly vegan barbecue (mostly vegan because the only non-vegan items were the mozzarella balls in the caprese salad and the two giant sirloin steaks i bought for me and jake). we also went to farmer's market, where we ran into evan, savannah, amy, and amy's much, much older boyfriend; cayuga lake creamery; fishing in the inlet at taughannock falls, where we saw tons of good-sized trout but didn't catch any of them; the commons, where we tried to go to the new waffle place but learned it was closed upon running into arnold and evelyn (we also learned that the waffle place was opened by arnold's former dealers); the less popular diner on state street, where we split three giant red-white-and-blue pancakes, which had raspberries, blueberries, and white chocolate chips in them; great bend, pennsylvania, where we bought a bunch of fireworks; back to oneonta to drop off my car key, after learning via jake's friend whose dad owns the place that there was in fact a place at the dealership to do so; and up to the woods behind campus to light off our fireworks. there was probably no way that even campus police would have caught us, given that everyone else in the greater ithaca area was doing their own fireworks too, but we were extremely paranoid about it. after lighting one little fountain we decided to try a roman candle, and when it shot a hundred feet into the air and let off a huge boom we grabbed our stuff and ran for it, giggling, back down the hill to the terraces parking lot. it was kind of awesome. oh, and we also watched twilight: new moon with rifftrax. bahaha.
monday kate had to work, so after she finished at the preschool she dropped me at the mall, where i went to borders and finished wetlands, which i had had to give up halfway through last summer because i moved to massachusetts and the groton public library did not have a copy. i also went to the SPCA annex and looked at kittens, ate a pretzel, and wandered around AC moore poking and smelling things and wishing i had a wedding to plan. when kate was done with the old lady who she PCAs for we went home and i made a delicious egg sandwich, and then we drank thai tea outside while watching the fireflies and bunnies frolic in her backyard. we finished off the evening in her kitchen, me messing around on the interwebs and she working on character sketches for andy's graphic novel which she may end up illustrating. i thought it was a nice close to the trip.
as i soon learned, though, the whole thing was far from over. this morning kate dropped me at the bus station in ithaca and i bought a ticket to oneonta. then i called the HR department at work and told them i would not be in today. then i called the subaru place. in hindsight, it was probably a mistake to do those things in that order, because not until the shortline coach was idling in the parking lot and i was sitting on it with all my stuff in the luggage hold did i learn that the subaru place was too busy to look at my car today. "oh," i said dejectedly, half-heartedly starting to explain that i was on a bus to oneonta at that very moment and that i needed my car to get home, which was roughly 300 miles away, so i could go to work and earn money to spend on such things as my car. i didn't get very far, though, so i just sat quietly on the bus the whole trip, taking deep breaths and listening to my iPod.
we rolled into oneonta around 11:15 and i was faced with a herculean task: walking from the bus station to the subaru place. under ordinary conditions this would have been a simple, half-hour stroll from downtown to the mostly residential area where the dealership is located, but i was carrying my purse, my entire camera bag, one large and one small wallet of CDs, and my very heavy red suitcase, which looks small and cute but is actually ridiculously hard to carry if it's packed full. plus it was like 90 degrees out. as blisters formed at the bases of my fingers, i had to stop every twenty feet to switch the suitcase from one hand to the other, and i could feel sweat pouring down my face and back and all those other little places where sweat goes. i probably looked ridiculous.
after almost an hour, though, i made it to the dealership, where with my key fob (which i had kept for myself) i unlocked my car and put my stuff in it. then i used their bathroom, helped myself to some water from their cooler, and headed to the service department to square off with whoever was available.
whoever was available turned out to be a tall woman in her 30s with hair much too blonde for her tan and a lot of eye makeup, and she politely but earnestly informed me that tomorrow was the earliest they could look at my car. defeated, i slunk down the street to the dairy queen and got a hot dog and a strawberry lemonade julius.
at this point i was faced with a question: what now? i considered asking kate to come get me after she got off work, but she had already driven to oneonta and back twice on my behalf, and that was more than enough as far as i was concerned. i considered taking another bus back to ithaca, but after calling the bus station (thanks, google 411!) i learned that the next one didn't leave until 6:45, so i would basically get back, go to kate's apartment, go to bed, and have to get up early again and go right back to the bus station. then, as i approached the subaru place, i saw that the chinese restaurant across the street had a motel attached to it. i decided to get a price quote from them and if one night would cost the equivalent of or less than two bus tickets, i would stay there tonight.
as it turns out, it did, more or less. (they also had parakeets, cockatiels, and cool fish in the lobby, which i must admit won me over.) so here i am, by myself in a motel in oneonta, with no friends and no free wi-fi. at least there is TV and air conditioning. i've mostly been napping, and occasionally updating people (my parents, andy, kate, work) on the situation via phone.
the door between my room and the room behind me is very thin, and the occupants of said room include a small child, probably under the age of 8, who seems to enjoy being tickled and screaming. also the toilet may be possessed. it starts running all of a sudden a couple of times an hour, and stops after a few seconds as suddenly as it began. oh well. i need to go find some dinner. with any luck i can go home tomorrow, and back to work on thursday. grr and argh.
basically, it turned out that although i probably could have continued to operate my vehicle, a bunch of stuff needed attention anyway and i will probably not be having the guys at the gas station do non-routine work on it again. what a long, strange trip it's been.
henceforth, this july 4th weekend shall be known as the Weekend of Car-Related Annoyance (WCRA). yes, it is still the weekend for me. and i have never been more pissed about such a thing.
it all started last week when i decided to get an oil change before my trip to ithaca. i was going to have the guys at the BP station where i park do it thursday, but i forgot, so as i trotted off to the office friday morning i had to tell the old middle eastern dude with the limp who doesn't speak english very well to ask the mechanic to do it that day. this time i was smart and left my work phone number with them instead of my cell, because although we're not really supposed to take personal calls during work hours, i figured this was important - i needed to make sure my car was running before i set off on my several-hundred-mile journey.
and lo and behold, midway into the morning i got a call from the mechanic, a pimply-faced guy probably not much older than myself, who said that my front struts were rotted out. did i know that? no, i did not know that, i told him. i didn't really know what front struts were, to tell the truth, but i didn't mention that. he said he could fix it for a cool 500 dollars. fine, i told him. that was most of the paycheck i'd gotten the day before, but the car was important.
later in the day he called me again, saying that two of my tires had leather cracks and needed to be replaced lest the leather break and strip off on the road. i assented to this, though it brought my total up to roughly 900 dollars. at this point i decided it was time to break down and call my dad, who had promised me long ago that if i couldn't afford to maintain my car, he would help me out. he was very understanding.
so, thinking that everything was peachy, i practically skipped down to the gas station at 3:00 (i had planned to leave early on this day from the inception of my plan, but on tuesday of last week the announcement was made that the whole office would close at 3:00 for the holiday, so i didn't have to take short lunches to make up the time), paid for my car, and sped off onto the mass pike towards ithaca.
everything went fine for the first five hours or so. i listened to weezer, stopped for gas and a huge piece of greasy pizza at one of the rest stations, and enjoyed the beautiful day and evening. at around 8:00, though, i was on I-88 near cobleskill with the cruise control on when i suddenly hit a bump, and the check engine and VDC off lights came on. "oh," thought i. "that could be bad."
i mashed the VDC off button a few times to see if anything changed, and pulled over to check if the gas cap was loose. negative. so i pulled out the owner's manual to see what advice it had to offer; it informed me that if both these lights were on in a steady (non-blinking) fashion, i had an emission system issue and/or engine malfunction, and that i should refrain from continued operation of the vehicle.
"fuck," i thought. actually, i may have said this out loud. i wasn't very keen on sitting on the shoulder of the interstate for long periods of time, though, so i drove a little further to the next exit and found myself in rustic howe's cave, new york, so named because in it there is a cave, a tourist trap related to the cave, and very little else. i stopped in the parking lot of a motel, and after much reviewing of the facts, called AAA.
in retrospect, i am glad that i have AAA, because they hooked me up with a tow truck when i was scatterbrained and freaking out. but i am not glad that i didn't have the foresight to get a "plus" account, because the one i have only covers 5 miles of towing, and the nearest subaru dealership was 44 miles away in oneonta. the tow truck was operated by a nice guy named bill and his 9- or 10-year-old son billy, though, and together we passed the ride in quiet reflection punctuated by periods of not especially awkward small talk. when we got to the dealership i gave up all hope of using normal methods of payment and pulled out my credit card.
after bill and billy took off, i waited until 10:00 for kate, who had graciously agreed to come rescue me. i couldn't find a drop chute for my car key, though, so i took it with me, along with all items of value that were in my car (CDs, GPS, etc.), back to kate's new apartment in lansing.
at that point the weekend got a lot less stressful, because we knew there was nothing to do about the car but wait for the dealership to open. we had a lot of fun saturday and sunday; saturday night kate's boyfriend jake and one of her wiccan friends came over and we had a mostly vegan barbecue (mostly vegan because the only non-vegan items were the mozzarella balls in the caprese salad and the two giant sirloin steaks i bought for me and jake). we also went to farmer's market, where we ran into evan, savannah, amy, and amy's much, much older boyfriend; cayuga lake creamery; fishing in the inlet at taughannock falls, where we saw tons of good-sized trout but didn't catch any of them; the commons, where we tried to go to the new waffle place but learned it was closed upon running into arnold and evelyn (we also learned that the waffle place was opened by arnold's former dealers); the less popular diner on state street, where we split three giant red-white-and-blue pancakes, which had raspberries, blueberries, and white chocolate chips in them; great bend, pennsylvania, where we bought a bunch of fireworks; back to oneonta to drop off my car key, after learning via jake's friend whose dad owns the place that there was in fact a place at the dealership to do so; and up to the woods behind campus to light off our fireworks. there was probably no way that even campus police would have caught us, given that everyone else in the greater ithaca area was doing their own fireworks too, but we were extremely paranoid about it. after lighting one little fountain we decided to try a roman candle, and when it shot a hundred feet into the air and let off a huge boom we grabbed our stuff and ran for it, giggling, back down the hill to the terraces parking lot. it was kind of awesome. oh, and we also watched twilight: new moon with rifftrax. bahaha.
monday kate had to work, so after she finished at the preschool she dropped me at the mall, where i went to borders and finished wetlands, which i had had to give up halfway through last summer because i moved to massachusetts and the groton public library did not have a copy. i also went to the SPCA annex and looked at kittens, ate a pretzel, and wandered around AC moore poking and smelling things and wishing i had a wedding to plan. when kate was done with the old lady who she PCAs for we went home and i made a delicious egg sandwich, and then we drank thai tea outside while watching the fireflies and bunnies frolic in her backyard. we finished off the evening in her kitchen, me messing around on the interwebs and she working on character sketches for andy's graphic novel which she may end up illustrating. i thought it was a nice close to the trip.
as i soon learned, though, the whole thing was far from over. this morning kate dropped me at the bus station in ithaca and i bought a ticket to oneonta. then i called the HR department at work and told them i would not be in today. then i called the subaru place. in hindsight, it was probably a mistake to do those things in that order, because not until the shortline coach was idling in the parking lot and i was sitting on it with all my stuff in the luggage hold did i learn that the subaru place was too busy to look at my car today. "oh," i said dejectedly, half-heartedly starting to explain that i was on a bus to oneonta at that very moment and that i needed my car to get home, which was roughly 300 miles away, so i could go to work and earn money to spend on such things as my car. i didn't get very far, though, so i just sat quietly on the bus the whole trip, taking deep breaths and listening to my iPod.
we rolled into oneonta around 11:15 and i was faced with a herculean task: walking from the bus station to the subaru place. under ordinary conditions this would have been a simple, half-hour stroll from downtown to the mostly residential area where the dealership is located, but i was carrying my purse, my entire camera bag, one large and one small wallet of CDs, and my very heavy red suitcase, which looks small and cute but is actually ridiculously hard to carry if it's packed full. plus it was like 90 degrees out. as blisters formed at the bases of my fingers, i had to stop every twenty feet to switch the suitcase from one hand to the other, and i could feel sweat pouring down my face and back and all those other little places where sweat goes. i probably looked ridiculous.
after almost an hour, though, i made it to the dealership, where with my key fob (which i had kept for myself) i unlocked my car and put my stuff in it. then i used their bathroom, helped myself to some water from their cooler, and headed to the service department to square off with whoever was available.
whoever was available turned out to be a tall woman in her 30s with hair much too blonde for her tan and a lot of eye makeup, and she politely but earnestly informed me that tomorrow was the earliest they could look at my car. defeated, i slunk down the street to the dairy queen and got a hot dog and a strawberry lemonade julius.
at this point i was faced with a question: what now? i considered asking kate to come get me after she got off work, but she had already driven to oneonta and back twice on my behalf, and that was more than enough as far as i was concerned. i considered taking another bus back to ithaca, but after calling the bus station (thanks, google 411!) i learned that the next one didn't leave until 6:45, so i would basically get back, go to kate's apartment, go to bed, and have to get up early again and go right back to the bus station. then, as i approached the subaru place, i saw that the chinese restaurant across the street had a motel attached to it. i decided to get a price quote from them and if one night would cost the equivalent of or less than two bus tickets, i would stay there tonight.
as it turns out, it did, more or less. (they also had parakeets, cockatiels, and cool fish in the lobby, which i must admit won me over.) so here i am, by myself in a motel in oneonta, with no friends and no free wi-fi. at least there is TV and air conditioning. i've mostly been napping, and occasionally updating people (my parents, andy, kate, work) on the situation via phone.
the door between my room and the room behind me is very thin, and the occupants of said room include a small child, probably under the age of 8, who seems to enjoy being tickled and screaming. also the toilet may be possessed. it starts running all of a sudden a couple of times an hour, and stops after a few seconds as suddenly as it began. oh well. i need to go find some dinner. with any luck i can go home tomorrow, and back to work on thursday. grr and argh.
basically, it turned out that although i probably could have continued to operate my vehicle, a bunch of stuff needed attention anyway and i will probably not be having the guys at the gas station do non-routine work on it again. what a long, strange trip it's been.