White trash New Year.
My intentions to have an ironic, hipster white trash New Year by seeing the Twistin' Tarantulas with the missus at an ironic, hipster dive bar noted for its $2 mugs of PBR and no-frills cuisine were foiled by an actual white trash New Year: spending a total of 7 hours outside in 20 degreee Fahrenheit weather on Monday, 31 December, waiting for a tow truck summoned by the roadside service provided by my insurance company.
The problem? A twitchy starter: the car (a 2003 Kia Spectra, purchased on Cinco de Mayo 2012) ran fine up until the night of Sunday, 30 December, when it wouldn't turn over; I took a PTO day on Monday in the hopes that my oldest and I could fix it, but, as he was coming off of a midnight shift, he didn't wake up until c. 2:00 p.m., only to determine that he couldn't do the work.
The towing service came by two hours after I'd first put in the call, and the damn car started up for the tow truck driver on his first try, after which he peeled off, looking askance at my automotive idiocy. Number One Son and I rode out to an Auto Zone for a free diagnostic -- against my wishes, for I was willing to pay for the diagnostic at the garage where he proposed to take the Kia to be fixed (unlike most other shops, this one doesn't waive the diagnostic fee if you have the repairs done there; it only knocks 15 bucks off of the diagnostic fee) -- only to learn after we got there that they couldn't go outside after dark due to the spate of robberies in the area. We then drove back to the garage, a half hour before they closed, but, since the fuel indicator was heading towards the "fumes" side of the dial, I stopped to put a few bucks worth of gas in the tank; naturally, when I went to start the car up again, I couldn't. Still had plenty of power in the battery (and Number One Son had confirmed this by pulling the battery and taking it to a different Auto Zone), but from the starter? Nuthin'.
We sat for four hours on the gas station's lot, with me periodically attempting to start the car; heading into the fourth hour, with still no tow truck despite numerous calls to my roadside service number, it started. I called the roadside service one final time, told them to cancel the tow truck order and strongly suggested that they review their contract with the company, and then drove, with Number One Son following in his car (his mother / my wife drove up with his car towards the end of our first hour there; she waited with us owing to Number Three Son blowing off her request to pick her up and take her home), to the garage, roughly a mile-and-a-half from our house, to drop it off for them to look at bright and early (hopefully...) on Wednesday, 2 January, and call me with an estimate.
How long did we wait? So long that going to the Twistin' Tarantulas show was out of the question (Number Three Son was a no-show, so we couldn't borrow his car; Number One Son had to work the midnight shift again that night; the missus' van has been dry-docked for a couple of weeks, and is likely to remain so until we get our tax refund, now that I have to throw my laughably small extra funds at my own vehicle); so long that we couldn't pick up pizzas to take home (the pizza place closed at 9 p.m.) or run through Arby's drive-thru to use the coupons that expired 31 December (they closed at 10 p.m.). We ended up at a McDonald's staffed by the "Z" team -- I had to return to the counter twice to get our order corrected, then discovered that they rang up Number One Son's order wrong, but he chose not to challenge it -- before heading home to a decidedly non-rockin' New Year's Eve.
I chugged a bottle of Boylan's birch beer between 12:30 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. Livin' large, that's how I roll.
Seems to me that this level of car trouble is also characteristic of a quintessentially Detroit -- well, metro Detroit -- New Year's Eve.
Hope to hell this isn't a foreshadowing of what's in store for 2013. If it is.... Well, where's that extinction-level asteroid when you really need it..?
The problem? A twitchy starter: the car (a 2003 Kia Spectra, purchased on Cinco de Mayo 2012) ran fine up until the night of Sunday, 30 December, when it wouldn't turn over; I took a PTO day on Monday in the hopes that my oldest and I could fix it, but, as he was coming off of a midnight shift, he didn't wake up until c. 2:00 p.m., only to determine that he couldn't do the work.
The towing service came by two hours after I'd first put in the call, and the damn car started up for the tow truck driver on his first try, after which he peeled off, looking askance at my automotive idiocy. Number One Son and I rode out to an Auto Zone for a free diagnostic -- against my wishes, for I was willing to pay for the diagnostic at the garage where he proposed to take the Kia to be fixed (unlike most other shops, this one doesn't waive the diagnostic fee if you have the repairs done there; it only knocks 15 bucks off of the diagnostic fee) -- only to learn after we got there that they couldn't go outside after dark due to the spate of robberies in the area. We then drove back to the garage, a half hour before they closed, but, since the fuel indicator was heading towards the "fumes" side of the dial, I stopped to put a few bucks worth of gas in the tank; naturally, when I went to start the car up again, I couldn't. Still had plenty of power in the battery (and Number One Son had confirmed this by pulling the battery and taking it to a different Auto Zone), but from the starter? Nuthin'.
We sat for four hours on the gas station's lot, with me periodically attempting to start the car; heading into the fourth hour, with still no tow truck despite numerous calls to my roadside service number, it started. I called the roadside service one final time, told them to cancel the tow truck order and strongly suggested that they review their contract with the company, and then drove, with Number One Son following in his car (his mother / my wife drove up with his car towards the end of our first hour there; she waited with us owing to Number Three Son blowing off her request to pick her up and take her home), to the garage, roughly a mile-and-a-half from our house, to drop it off for them to look at bright and early (hopefully...) on Wednesday, 2 January, and call me with an estimate.
How long did we wait? So long that going to the Twistin' Tarantulas show was out of the question (Number Three Son was a no-show, so we couldn't borrow his car; Number One Son had to work the midnight shift again that night; the missus' van has been dry-docked for a couple of weeks, and is likely to remain so until we get our tax refund, now that I have to throw my laughably small extra funds at my own vehicle); so long that we couldn't pick up pizzas to take home (the pizza place closed at 9 p.m.) or run through Arby's drive-thru to use the coupons that expired 31 December (they closed at 10 p.m.). We ended up at a McDonald's staffed by the "Z" team -- I had to return to the counter twice to get our order corrected, then discovered that they rang up Number One Son's order wrong, but he chose not to challenge it -- before heading home to a decidedly non-rockin' New Year's Eve.
I chugged a bottle of Boylan's birch beer between 12:30 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. Livin' large, that's how I roll.
Seems to me that this level of car trouble is also characteristic of a quintessentially Detroit -- well, metro Detroit -- New Year's Eve.
Hope to hell this isn't a foreshadowing of what's in store for 2013. If it is.... Well, where's that extinction-level asteroid when you really need it..?