(no subject)
Sunday afternoon 
grrlpup wanted to take the car for a short spin, just to make sure it would start...
Narrator: It did not start.
It's a Prius with a push-button start, not a proper ignition, and pushing the button is mostly just booting-up the computer (rather than anything so crude as starting a physical engine). But the dash-display lights didn't come on, and something in the engine compartment started whining weakly like a deflating balloon. Nothing we did could get it to stop making the deflating-noise, either. Well, fuck. Upside: it's not like we needed to go anywhere anytime soon. We called our next-door-neighbor who's a mechanic, and when he didn't pick up, we called AAA.
I have never seen AAA come so quickly -- I'm guessing there were no other jobs in the queue, and our mechanic was delayed by nothing but travel time. He gave us a jump, he had a look at the battery (original to the car, so maybe getting on toward time to replace it, maybe not), quoted us a fee to replace it (we choked from sticker shock, but I guess everything in this car is going to give us sticker shock), and went on his way.
Whereupon we went for a spin on the interstates in the name of bringing the battery back up to charge.
I have never seen the freeways so empty in this town, excepting at three in the morning, maybe. The over-roadway reader boards that give time-to-arrive estimates all said "STAY HOME, SAVE LIVES" (which is the name of our local stay-at-home order), and the downtown skyscrapers were eerily dark. Lots of storefronts were dark, too -- I never realized I'd never seen the bar on the corner dark at night, until I drove by and it was.
Anyway, we did the big interstate loop instead of the little interstate loop, because we needed the engine to run a certain number of minutes and we were making that good of time on the freeways.
Then we stopped off at the Burgerville drive-through for dinner -- there was a line there, to our surprise, but I guess all takeaway traffic, such as it is, is going through the drive-through right now -- and then we came home. I'm glad I got to see what the city looked like during the shut-down, I guess, but boy, creepy.
So that's our PSA for the week: if you have a car and haven't fired its ignition lately, you might want to do that. This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. You may comment there (using OpenID) or here.
grrlpup wanted to take the car for a short spin, just to make sure it would start...
Narrator: It did not start.
It's a Prius with a push-button start, not a proper ignition, and pushing the button is mostly just booting-up the computer (rather than anything so crude as starting a physical engine). But the dash-display lights didn't come on, and something in the engine compartment started whining weakly like a deflating balloon. Nothing we did could get it to stop making the deflating-noise, either. Well, fuck. Upside: it's not like we needed to go anywhere anytime soon. We called our next-door-neighbor who's a mechanic, and when he didn't pick up, we called AAA.
I have never seen AAA come so quickly -- I'm guessing there were no other jobs in the queue, and our mechanic was delayed by nothing but travel time. He gave us a jump, he had a look at the battery (original to the car, so maybe getting on toward time to replace it, maybe not), quoted us a fee to replace it (we choked from sticker shock, but I guess everything in this car is going to give us sticker shock), and went on his way.
Whereupon we went for a spin on the interstates in the name of bringing the battery back up to charge.
I have never seen the freeways so empty in this town, excepting at three in the morning, maybe. The over-roadway reader boards that give time-to-arrive estimates all said "STAY HOME, SAVE LIVES" (which is the name of our local stay-at-home order), and the downtown skyscrapers were eerily dark. Lots of storefronts were dark, too -- I never realized I'd never seen the bar on the corner dark at night, until I drove by and it was.
Anyway, we did the big interstate loop instead of the little interstate loop, because we needed the engine to run a certain number of minutes and we were making that good of time on the freeways.
Then we stopped off at the Burgerville drive-through for dinner -- there was a line there, to our surprise, but I guess all takeaway traffic, such as it is, is going through the drive-through right now -- and then we came home. I'm glad I got to see what the city looked like during the shut-down, I guess, but boy, creepy.
So that's our PSA for the week: if you have a car and haven't fired its ignition lately, you might want to do that. This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
comments. You may comment there (using OpenID) or here.