Thursday, May 7, 2009

There once was a car

So my car is at it again. My car broke down on my way back from Hesston on Sunday. Hershy, Nathaniel, and I had gotten to Kansas City and had to detour onto 435 because of construction on 35. Then my car was smelling a bit funny so I pulled into a parking lot to check it out. I thought perhaps it needed more oil (it had been leaking some). Well, it died. A man stopped, showed us where a parts store was, and jumped the car. We made it a mile from the store and my car died again. By this time Amanda, a girl from college who was heading to Iowa and not far behind us on the road, had stopped and her and her family were trying to help. We couldn't jump the car, and ended up having to have it towed.

So close to having the engine diagnosed for free at the parts place, but NOOOOOOOOOOO it was towed to a Honda dealership where it cost $97 for them to tell me my alternator died and killed my battery on its way out. Which I had already assumed was the problem. They wanted to charge $580 to do that less than an hour job. The alternator was still under warranty because I had to put a new one in last semester when it died on my way home from Bluffton. So my parents picked up the alternator and drove 11 hours on Monday to Kansas City where my car sat in a Honda dealership parking lot and we sat 7 minutes from the dealership at Ashley's cousin's house . (We were all very happy that we had remembered that she was staying there for the week. and had 3 extra beds. We slept well, went for a walk, played basketball, made and grilled hamburgers...had fun).

Long story short, my parents got here at 1:00am, fixed the car and we headed out at 2am. Hershy and I drove all night and we stopped for breakfast in Iowa at 10:00. My grandparents met up with us for breakfast and we continued on to Ohio. We got back about 6:15pm. Long trip, and because this was the 2nd time in less than a month that my car broke down. I De-named it and it is not l allowed to go on long trips. It still has a few things that need fixed up and I think that 2 adventures in less than a month caused by the car is quite enough.