For a lot of people I know, 2009 has been a less-than-stellar year. For amazoni, it’s been worse than most. Early in the summer, she fell down some stairs, fractured her leg, needed emergency surgery and some pins to put it all back together, was bedridden and missed her high school reunion and san diego comic con, has been unable to drive and has had to rely on others to get her where she needed to go. This week, she ACTUALLY got to drive her car, hit some road debris on an exit, the car rolled UP the embankment and she ended up next to a guardrail facing oncoming traffic; miraculously, she wasn’t injured, but the car was totaled.
I posted on her Facebook page that I was calling out whatever witches had placed a hex on her to knock it the fuck off, and suppose I have brought their wrath down onto myself.
It was amazoni‘s birthday today, and we planned on having one of our obnoxious lady get-togethers at Carolina Kitchen in Redmond at 6:30. I, deciding I was going to be clever and leave early for once to beat traffic, found myself driving through a torrential thunderstorm. I ended up deciding that since I was SO very early, I would stop and have a drink at Pegasus and maybe let the worst of the rain pass. It was at the precise moment that I turned into their parking lot that my power steering went out. You know how, when people get into accidents, they talk about how time slowed down and everything seemed so very clear? My mind doesn’t do that. I skip right over into the denial portion of the grieving process and then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump straight to anger. My first thought was that my steering rack had gone out again, my second thought was “No, no, this right here is not happening” and my third thought was “Goddamnit, that was a thousand dollar repair!”
It was then, and only then, that I realized it was not just the power steering that had gone out. Oh, no. The engine had ALSO died. The lights and radio and fan were all merrily doing their thing, but it didn’t matter how desperately I pushed the gas pedal, hoping against hope to direct the car into a parking spot, it was just not advancing any further.
And as the rain pounded down all around me, I knew that I would have to shift the car into neutral, get out, and try to push it into a parking spot. I was immediately drenched the second I stepped out; lightning exploded around me with all the surprise of undesirable plumber ass peeking out of the top of a pair of pants–CRACK! It would have made for an excellently overdramatic movie scene: perhaps an overhead shot would have been appropriate, so you could truly witness all the rain pelting the ground as I fell to my knees and cried “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” whilst shaking my fist at the sky. I was able to push the car to the point where it was no longer directly blocking someone but after I struggled to turn the wheel and pushed to get it nearer a parking space, I couldn’t get the leverage I needed from the door frame and had to give up for the moment. I retreated into the bar, recruited someone’s help, and we were both soaked to the bone as we maneuvered the car into two parking spots. Hell, the car was dead and the nearby business was closed for the night, I wasn’t about to be overly picky about the push-and-shove parking job we just did.
We went back inside, Marija brought us towels to dry ourselves with and mugs of hot tea while I sent out the obligatory “oh hey, car is dead” text messages to the girls, asking if someone could drop by and pick me up on their way to Carolina Kitchen, and I’d just deal with the frigging car after dinner–it’s not like it was going anywhere, and if it did, it would take a pretty damn dedicated thief, and more power to them. Enjoy!
Emily came to pick me up, and the gentleman who’d helped me move my car had sneaked out at some point so I didn’t get a chance to thank him again for his assistance. Not to worry: my chance to pay it forward came more quickly than anticipated, when two miles down the road, there was a car with its flashers on stuck in the middle of an intersection, with a man getting in and out of it anxiously while traffic just drove around him. I know what you’re thinking, and no, this man did not steal my car. Emily exclaimed that she couldn’t believe no one was stopping to help him instead of just driving around him, and so I hopped out of the car, dashed across the intersection, and pushed his car while he steered it into a nearby gas station. Any drying off that I had done with towels in the bar was instantly negated.
When the waitress came by to get our drink order, I asked her for some water, or perhaps just an empty glass and I could wring my hair into it. Thus began one of the lesser-known stages of grieving: Wisecracking As A Means To Deal With Frustration To Keep From Outright Cursing A Blue Streak Or Perhaps Sobbing. I noted that it was ironic that the car that GM had kindly taken the time to send me a note informing me that one day it would explode into flames and was subsequently unsafe to park in or near buildings had instead died in a deluge of water. I noted my anger at losing the twenty bucks worth of gas that I had JUST PUMPED into it; thereby doubling or even trebling its value. I made a lot more jokes that my friends were kind enough to laugh at even if they weren’t particularly funny; I WAS ON FIRE.
Well, actually, I was freezing, seeing as how my clothes were soaked and I was sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant. In November, guys? Really?
We were there for over two and a half hours, talking and swapping stories and jokes; the waitress, as usual, found us to be both hilarious AND adorable, and sent me home with some of their amazingly delicious vinegar bbq sauce which I will hoard like Gollum since they’re shutting their doors permanently in a week or so.
After we got to Pegasus, I called Tristan, and he agreed to meet me and take a look at the car to see if he could suss out what was wrong. At night. In the pouring rain. This makes him a strong contender for The Best Person In The Universe Award. We spent a while hunched over the engine, he tapped things and attempted to wrench things and poked things while I held the flashlight and attempted to not be in the way if not directly helpful. After a while, he admitted to being stuck since it seemed like the engine SHOULD turn over, we were both soaked, and even my shoes had given up the battle, exclaiming “BITCH, we are WATER-RESISTANT, NOT WATERPROOF” so my socks had started to squish and my whole body had begun the pruning process, so we closed the hood and pushed it into a non-reserved spot to sit for the night and get a fresh look at it tomorrow.
I suppose I am extremely lucky in that if my car HAD to die somewhere 20+ miles from home, it was at my home away from home, a place where everyone knows my name and won’t tow me if I keep my car at the lot overnight, so I’m LESS screwed than if the car had pulled this act somewhere in downtown Seattle, or Cthulhu forbid, on the freeway. Also, I’m lucky in that now I live close enough to work to get there on foot AND I’m closer to public transportation, so if this car ends up needing more in repairs than it’s worth, I can hoof it until I figure out what I’m going to do. It will just be inconvenient and sucky in the meanwhile.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go roll in a pile of dessicant packets.
