The Mothership
For those of you who aren't in "the know" (wherever that is), I drive a 2000 Chryster Grand Voyager Minivan, silver. I refer to her in many different terms of ranging endearment, the most common being "The Mothership." However, I've also called her the Silver Bullet, Big Gray Barn, and Piece of Crap. This vehicle, in less than a year, has cost me (aka Mom and Dad) literally thousands of dollars in repairs and other random bullshit. So, we have a love/hate relationship that's costing me dearly. How like life.
Anyway, yesterday, Mothership added to her list of times she's randomly crapped out on me in one sense or the other. And it was wholly disappointing, too, because we'd had a good thing going for a while. See, soon after I rammed her into the back of another vehicle, we spent some time apart, and when she came back from the first auto shop, she was still fairly worse for the wear. So much so, that she tried to kill herself the night my family and I had found our Christmas Tree and strapped the 10-footer to her roof. Merry Christmas. Anyway, we got her all fixed up and I was able to drive to and fro from Long Island to Buffalo/Geneseo as I pleased.
Since then, there hadn't been any major catastrohpes. She'd begun leaking out a little anti-freeze, but I keep adding it every once in a while since I don't have the money to shell out for somethign that I can replace in small increments at a time. She also has this lousy dent on her hood from the aforementioned accident, but it's kind of baller because it looks like I hit a person. (Don't mess.)
Anyway, I was trying so hard to figure why, yesterday, she decided she was giving up on her alternator. For those of you who aren't in the "mechanical know" (a portion of the other, more general "know"), an alternator is important if you want your car to start. In the simplest terms: your alternator produces AC (alternating current, hence the name) power which provides voltage to your battery. (Your battery produces DC [direct current] power, so the alternator’s power is fed through diodes to convert it.) Yes, I’m a nerd because this is physics, and I enjoy it. Anyway, Mothership ditched her alternator, thus also destroying her battery. A call to AAA, two hours of missed work, and $575 dollars later, we were back on the road.
It hit me today why she decided to act like a bitch. *sigh* So, I’m insane and I talk to my car on occasion. Things like, “Way to accelerate, babe,” or, “If you keep squeaking like that, we’re going to have to stop.” (Ironically, I say these things to people, too, but not when you’re thinking.) Anyhow, I’d always given my car credit for picking out good music when I’ve got my iPod plugged in and on Shuffle-All. But, recently, I discovered that it’s really my iPod has a lot of love for me and may have been responsible for selecting good songs all along. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in passing to Mothership. Hurt, she gave me the vehicular equivalent of the middle-finger and laughed.
The only thing I like about driving that car is that the air-conditioning is broken, the passenger side window doesn't go down, I've still got pieces of my desk and some random articles of clothing in the back, and it has terrible gas mileage. ... But it's super-fun to cut rich assholes off when they're being stupid, because she's built like a battleship and if someone crashed their Bentley her, I'd love it. "I've got lost of cash, evidently... when I'm riding out in my Bentley... when I'm riding out in my Bentley with the friiiiinge on top."