Weekend Adventure
I went to Perkasie, PA this past weekend to visit Ben and Matt's relatives, and bring them back to Madison before we head up to New England for Annual Conference this coming Wednesday.
The trip, which should have taken me an hour and forty-five minutes took....six hours.
This is because my car broke down. On I-78 W. In New Jersey rush hour traffic.
I thought it was the transmission. I reached a point where traffic was slowing down a bit, so I put on my brakes and heard a rather clunky sound as I started to slow down. When traffic started to move again, I put on my accelerator, and it wouldn't shift. I put it up to 50 mph and the RPM dial was at 4, with no hope of shifting. And then...the engine light turned on.
Fortunately there was an exit right up ahead. Unfortunately, I had to cross two lanes of traffic to get there. I missed the exit by about 100 yards, and so decided that I should back up in the breakdown lane so I could make my way to the exit. Granted, this probably wasn't the smartest ideas for two reasons:
1) The breakdown lane is about as wide as a car.
2) If the transmission was the problem, putting the car into reverse might have meant not being able to get the car out of reverse.
But I managed to get off the exit and into the parking lot of a nearby diner with only one person honking at me.
Did I mention that all of this was in the middle of a downpour?
I called my parents, thinking that I'd have to call AAA (which my dad advised). I called Ben, and he and his grandfather were going to make the hour drive to come get me.
So I sat in my car and waited to get through to AAA (took me about 15 minutes), and then requested that my car be towed to the nearest Dodge dealership (since the car I was driving was a 2000 Dodge Caravan). I was kind of freaked out about riding with the tow guy -- he might be sketchy or creepy. He finally came around 7:50 and towed the car to the dealership, and we had a good conversation. Turns out the town I broke down in is Clinton, NJ, which has a lot of unfortunate drug problems because of the affluence of the community. We talked about that for awhile, and then he dropped me off, saying that the next car he had to go pick up was a 200 Dodge Grand Caravan. Looked like it was a bad night for Caravans.
Which brings us to the funny part of the story. When the tow guy had showed up, I called Ben to give him directions to the dealership. After I arrived there, I wanted to let him know so I called....and it turned out that five miles away from the exit, their Grand Caravan had broken down - the fan belt had come off and the car was overheating...lots of bad stuff. So they had to have the car towed. It wasn't the same tow guy, but it would have been funny if it was. Apparently, when they called AAA, the woman who answered found the situation rather amusing.
So Ben's uncle came out for the rescue. It was around 9:30 by the time I finally made it out of the car (I had been hanging out there since the service portion of the dealership was closed. Fortunately, there was a small Dunkin Donuts station within walking distance, which I availed myself of to get a small coffee and a donut, as well as taxi numbers in case I needed them). I left my keys with the dealership via one of those fun service envelopes, and we finally made it to Perkasie around 11:30. They were able to fix his grandfather's car, which was great.
The dealership called me yesterday -- apparently, it was just the input/output censors that needed replacing, along with a new filter and some fluid. They were going to do an oil change as well. So I'm very thankful that my whole transmission wasn't blown, and that it wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it would be. My parents were going to pay for it anyway, but I would have felt awful if it was an expensive job.
My car should be ready today at some point. I'm going to try to pick it up tomorrow before we go off to Conference, but the guy at the dealership said that I could pick it up whenever I could; it didn't matter.
So that is my car adventure of the year!
The trip, which should have taken me an hour and forty-five minutes took....six hours.
This is because my car broke down. On I-78 W. In New Jersey rush hour traffic.
I thought it was the transmission. I reached a point where traffic was slowing down a bit, so I put on my brakes and heard a rather clunky sound as I started to slow down. When traffic started to move again, I put on my accelerator, and it wouldn't shift. I put it up to 50 mph and the RPM dial was at 4, with no hope of shifting. And then...the engine light turned on.
Fortunately there was an exit right up ahead. Unfortunately, I had to cross two lanes of traffic to get there. I missed the exit by about 100 yards, and so decided that I should back up in the breakdown lane so I could make my way to the exit. Granted, this probably wasn't the smartest ideas for two reasons:
1) The breakdown lane is about as wide as a car.
2) If the transmission was the problem, putting the car into reverse might have meant not being able to get the car out of reverse.
But I managed to get off the exit and into the parking lot of a nearby diner with only one person honking at me.
Did I mention that all of this was in the middle of a downpour?
I called my parents, thinking that I'd have to call AAA (which my dad advised). I called Ben, and he and his grandfather were going to make the hour drive to come get me.
So I sat in my car and waited to get through to AAA (took me about 15 minutes), and then requested that my car be towed to the nearest Dodge dealership (since the car I was driving was a 2000 Dodge Caravan). I was kind of freaked out about riding with the tow guy -- he might be sketchy or creepy. He finally came around 7:50 and towed the car to the dealership, and we had a good conversation. Turns out the town I broke down in is Clinton, NJ, which has a lot of unfortunate drug problems because of the affluence of the community. We talked about that for awhile, and then he dropped me off, saying that the next car he had to go pick up was a 200 Dodge Grand Caravan. Looked like it was a bad night for Caravans.
Which brings us to the funny part of the story. When the tow guy had showed up, I called Ben to give him directions to the dealership. After I arrived there, I wanted to let him know so I called....and it turned out that five miles away from the exit, their Grand Caravan had broken down - the fan belt had come off and the car was overheating...lots of bad stuff. So they had to have the car towed. It wasn't the same tow guy, but it would have been funny if it was. Apparently, when they called AAA, the woman who answered found the situation rather amusing.
So Ben's uncle came out for the rescue. It was around 9:30 by the time I finally made it out of the car (I had been hanging out there since the service portion of the dealership was closed. Fortunately, there was a small Dunkin Donuts station within walking distance, which I availed myself of to get a small coffee and a donut, as well as taxi numbers in case I needed them). I left my keys with the dealership via one of those fun service envelopes, and we finally made it to Perkasie around 11:30. They were able to fix his grandfather's car, which was great.
The dealership called me yesterday -- apparently, it was just the input/output censors that needed replacing, along with a new filter and some fluid. They were going to do an oil change as well. So I'm very thankful that my whole transmission wasn't blown, and that it wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it would be. My parents were going to pay for it anyway, but I would have felt awful if it was an expensive job.
My car should be ready today at some point. I'm going to try to pick it up tomorrow before we go off to Conference, but the guy at the dealership said that I could pick it up whenever I could; it didn't matter.
So that is my car adventure of the year!