The McCarthy's: More bad luck

I thought the bad luck with cars would be over. . . I was wrong!

Yesterday morning when I was driving to work, I noticed my interior lights were dim (yes school starts so early that it is dark when I am driving there). But I didn’t think much of it, and clicked them brighter. Afterschool I ran a few errands (ok actually I went to the outlet mall) and everything was fine. When I got home, Russell was already home and was reheating some leftover pizza from this weekend. I asked him if he wanted to do rotisserie chicken like we planned, or to just snack and do leftovers. He voted for the latter.

Later that night we decided to go get some frozen yogurt. They just opened a new place by our house, and it’s really good, lots of variety. They have a “smile points” that are basically a frequent visitor program. So after many jokes about us increasing our smilage, we went over and got some. When we walked in, Russell noticed a coworker in there with his family. So we went and talked with them for awhile. It was about 8:30 when we left, and it’s no longer summer so it was dark. All the sudden on our way home the radio clicked off. I asked Russell if he did that, and he aid no. So we were confused. About 15 seconds later the entire car shut down. We were able to coast over to a side street.

Russell popped to hood and looked, I don’t know what he was looking for. But he decided that we needed to have someone come jump us. So we called his mom and she came to save the day. She jumped us and the car started up. so we turned around and tried to make it the last mile home, and about 52 seconds later it died again. This time there was no side street to turn into close by. So Russell got out and started pushing the car. I just want to say that power steering is AMAZING. It takes so much to turn a car when power steering doesn’t work.

We turn into a private neighborhood/rich people private airport. So we were out of the way of traffic. Russell calls Geico and they send out a tow truck (yay for having good insurance!!). Russell’s mom took us home (we both had to pee- lol). She left and we waited for the tow truck guy to call and say that he was 10 minutes out. He called about 15 minutes later, so it wasn’t that long of a wait.

So we go back out and wait for the tow truck. We saw it pass by once, and then come and find us. The guy was really good. he had to jump it again, so we could put it in neutral. He tows it to a place closer to Russell’s parent house, because it had an open lot at night. But this time is 10:30. By the time we made it home, we both needed showers, because we had been standing outside a lot. We normally go to bed around 9:30- so I was very tired this morning.

Russell was tempted to called in from work, but I told him he needed to take me to work, so he might as well go too. So Russell dropped me off at school this morning, went to work for a few hours and then went back to the mechanics to talk to them and get it fixed. It was the alternator that went out. So apparently that’s what charges the battery when the car is on, and since it wasn’t charging the battery, the battery was completely drained.

The mechanics fixed it today, and we picked it up tonight. So the ordeal is over, just about $700 poorer than we were yesterday Sad smile