Another unlucky day
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Yesterday was another eventful one for us. It was weird, bizarre and highly utimely.I was on a mission to find a wedding dress for our friends' weddings. I was willing to drive around the city to buy a dress and that meant possibly 16+ miles of just parking and fitting. I must've tried about 30 dresses yesterday.
Anyway, after dropping Hoen off at the office, I had to go home because I had forgotten to bring something. As I parked in the garage, I noticed that Hoen had turned the headlights on. I turned it off, went inside the house then left for the mall. I made stops at the Oakview Mall which is at 144th WEST and decided later to go all the way to Village Pointe which is at 168th West of Omaha. Now Hoen's office is at 68th East so that's a lot of miles in between. It was already about 6 pm when I FINALLY got a dress at White House, Black Market (by the way, I had this scratching feat after trying on one of the dresses in the mall. Good thing I had my trusty chinese skin cream with me. I was starting to itch all over my torso! Eeyuck!) . I decided to just go East and wait for Hoen to be done with work at the nearest Caribou Coffee. I frequent the place for their free Wi-Fi. Hoen arrives about 7:10 pm and we head to the car shortly after.
Hoen starts the engine. The engine is dead. We wait a few seconds, start it again and still nothing. We wait for a couple of minutes and it's the same. There's just this clinking sound whenever we turn on the ignition. At this point, Hoen calls AAA. We had JUST signed up for membership
this year. Wise decision! So I ask this couple who was outside the Coffee shop if they had been their for long and if so, did I leave my car lights on. She said, "No. It just blinked when you turned on the alarm. And if you left it on, I would've gone inside and told you." Hokay. I was a bit relieved because I was so sure I had turned the lights off at the garage. And I didn't leave the lights on inside nor did I leave the door ajar because the alarm wouldn't have gone off if such was the case.Now while Hoen was on the phone, this girl in a white car attempts to do a straight U-Turn. I remember muttering, "Back up, back up, there's a puddle of water from the rain over the gutter." But she rams it anyway and rrrrr... her right front tire gets stuck. This car behind her stops and Hoen and I go over and offer to lift the car while she swerves. But it would've left a huge mess with all the mud. I was beginning to think that this joint was a Twilight Zone of car wrecks. We told them that we were having some car trouble ourselves and that AAA is on their way and might be here IN AN HOUR. The girl didn't know what to do so the driver of the car behind her offered to steer out of the pothole. After several tries, he was able to move the car forward. Yey! Moreover, this guy volunteers to help us jump our battery with his battery. The only problem was I was parked RIGHT IN FRONT of the coffee shop and the owner of this car beside us was nowhere to be found. Since we had to jump the batt, both cars had to be next to each other. So I tried to go on Neutral while Hoen and this bartender push the car to the parking space behind us. But the shifts wouldn't nudge. I tried over and over and over... stepping on the brakes, not stepping on the brakes but nothing happened.
We were now starting to wonder that maybe this is more than just a battery problem. Something may have short circuited inside. At this point, this other guy walks by and offers his help. Turns out be an
expert on cars so he made us turn on the ignition and looked at the engine and studied the battery. He taught us this trick on being able to shift gears while the shift lock was child-protected. There is this hole beside the gear and in there, you can stick your car key in and the gears turn loose. Magic! Hoen and I had no idea about that feature so we were grateful. Finally, we were able to back up the car and the bartender jumped our batt using his batt. We rev'd it for a few minutes and said our thank yous (these guys were doing a lot of diagnosing and advice giving). AAA arrived just in time. He looks at the battery and says, "I don't even have to test it. That green stuff on top of the battery? That's acid. That means it should've been replaced" So he calibrates it and true enough, his device read "REPLACE BATTERY." We were on the road after that and after going back and forth deciding whether to go to Walmart 99th, Walmart 156th or the nearest Sears, we parked up the Sears Auto Center. Hoen then tells me to back the car up and park to the office garage so I tried to. The engine was dead again. AT LEAST WE WERE ALREADY IN THE FRIGGIN' AUTO CENTER! Phew! So half an hour later, we bought a new battery, not budgeted by the way, had them install it and drove on home. Batteries usually last about 3 years. Ours lasted 4 years and 3 months. What really scared me was what if the car had died at the Village Pointe at 168th? Or even at Oakview at 144th? And I would've been all alone and desperate for help from strangers? Good thing about Omaha is that people are usually so nice that they really go out of their way to help you.I was just thankful for 2 things: First, that all those people came by to help and second, that it all went down at Caribou and not in the middle of the road. Susmaryosep, unsaon nalang. We are so marking our calendars for the next battery change. August 8 2010. Hehe.
posted by maudester @ 1:05 PM
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