This past week, I was out and about when I noticed a liquid trail leading to my parked car. I knelt down, touched the substance and thought it looked (and felt) like oil. I looked beneath my car and there was a sizable puddle. I hopped in the old gal and drove straight to my mechanic.
The next day I called the dude and the news was not good. Yes, there was an oil leak. But there may be other leaks. Other problems. And then my mechanic said something that just about made me cry: Maybe it’s time to consider making this car into a garage queen, driven only on the weekends.
My old car is older than me. She’s put in a lot of good years. In all honesty, she probably deserves some rest. But she is also my only car. I don’t have a second vehicle for getting around (unless you count my bicycle). Yes, Mister has a car. But he’s driving that one. And that guy has places to go, too. We’re not a 3-car household. We’re just not.
And now I have some serious thinking before me – about whether or not to keep my car. I love the old gal. I do. But L.A. is a big town, with spotty public transportation. Not having a car – for me – is unrealistic. Not having a car payment has been pretty awesome. Just thinking about new debt gives me the willies.
I always knew my old car wouldn’t last forever. I just thought she’d hang in there a few years more. Bummer.
Your car probably won’t give you this much excitement but to paraphrase Delbert McClinton, when Leela (my Monte Carlo) left, she was gone.
At the time of the incident, there were pot seedlings growing in the remaining floorboard carpet, kept moist by the almost nonexistent window seals. The day it happened, me a a guy from Griffin GA — both tripping quite soundly — were travelling in one of the middle lanes along I-285 in rush hour traffic when the wobbling wheel (the tire of which we assumed was under inflated) tore free from the rest of the vehicle and, as the front of the car lurched in that direction, bounced high in the air and cleared two lanes of traffic (passenger Pat spotted this bit as I struggled with the now difficult steering). Sparks cascaded over the right front of the car as we slid forward and to the right at close to 90 mph miraculously missing every vehicle in the two lanes we crossed to slam into a concrete wall by the breakdown lane. Slowing slightly as the car spun back across five lanes only to hit the barrier between the inner and outer loops of the highway we found ourselves moving forward again as we careened across the megaroad finally coming to a relatively smooth stop in the emergency lane. We only sat for a few seconds then grabbed our essentials and hopped out for a bit of a smoke on the walk to the next exit where we went into a Waffle House and I used the pay phone to call a wrecker (the guy eventually gave us $20 for the beast). While awaiting this ride, Pat looked up over his cup of coffee and said, “well, that was different.”