I’ve been having a couple of issues with my car, recently.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason, when you turn the ignition, if it doesn’t start the first time, it won’t the second, or third, or fourth…you basically have to sit back for half an hour and then try again.\u00c2\u00a0 If I’d had the time and money I would have taken it into the\u00c2\u00a0dealership and had it looked at, but I’m nothing if not a procrastinator (I think – I’ll have to give it some more thought later), so I just left it.\u00c2\u00a0 As a workaround, I just developed a specific combination of hand\/foot moves that usually did the trick of making sure the car started on the first key-turn.<\/p>\n
Obviously (to me, now), the ignition problem was merely a symptom of bigger problems, and these came home to roost last Monday.\u00c2\u00a0 I was making my second trip of the day from downtown Houston back to home in Katy (some 30 miles) when the car seemed to lose power.\u00c2\u00a0 I stomped on the gas, but\u00c2\u00a0the car just gave one\u00c2\u00a0last wheeze, before cutting the power and coasting\u00c2\u00a0gently to\u00c2\u00a0a stop.\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily, I was taking the back roads\u00c2\u00a0rather than\u00c2\u00a0just getting on the freeways (trusting\u00c2\u00a0the wife’s new\u00c2\u00a0Garmin GPS rather than my instincts), so\u00c2\u00a0I wasn’t in the middle of traffic, which would have been more problematic as no-one here slows down for anything (except maybe to gawk at an accident – that they possibly caused themselves by driving while talking on their mobile phone).\u00c2\u00a0After a couple of attempts at my magic tap-dance and hand-jive combination, I gave up, swore a lot, swore some more, and then pushed the car down a side-street and into a parking lot, swearing as I went.<\/p>\n
One of the joys of Amex Platinum membership is that they give you free(-ish) roadside assistance.\u00c2\u00a0 So I whipped out my card, called the Concierge (I know – they’re great<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Really.) and within a couple of minutes on the phone (and after confirming that I was in a ‘safe’ place, and didn’t need anything else [hotel reservation? flowers sent to the wife as an apology for getting home late?]) they had arranged for a tow-truck to come and take care of me.<\/p>\n Disappointingly, however, it turns out that Amex don’t actually have their own fleet of gold-plated recovery vehicles chauffeured by liveried mechanics who talk like Alfred in Batman.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, they subcontract out to whatever grease-monkey with his own tow-truck they can find, who’s willing to come out at 11pm on a Monday night.\u00c2\u00a0 About 45 minutes later Jo(s)e Lunchpail duly turned up – with his wife\/girlfriend\/’lover’ in the cab.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he was mid-way through taking her on a date. In his tow truck (nice).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0There’s a man who\u00c2\u00a0clearly knows how to show a woman a good time; although I doubt they’ll be canoodling in the back seat, what with it being a flat-bed and all…<\/p>\n Anyway, he tried jump-starting it, which obviously didn’t work (there was no problem with the battery – I’d been sat there listening to XM radio – which, incidentally, has gone right downhill since the merger with Sirius – whilst I was waiting for him to turn up), and then announced that he’d have to tow me somewhere. As there was no way the car was going to make it anywhere under its own power, I opted to get towed to the dealership, which was about halfway home. We got to the dealership around midnight. I had the tow-truck driver drop the car in the service lane, and left my keys in the mailbox with a note to my regular ‘service technician’.<\/p>\n Because Amex only cover the first $50 of a call-out (which is normally enough to cover a jump-start – as it has with Louse’s car twice this year already), I had to fork out the remainder of the $110 towing fee myself. The tow-truck driver then announced that he didn’t take credit cards (even though the form he made me sign had checkboxes for all of the major credit cards).\u00c2\u00a0 He offered to take me to an ATM (I assume cash machine, and not the sexual practice), but handily I had $65 on\u00c2\u00a0me (unusually – I’m like the Queen – I don’t carry money), so I gave him the $60 in cash.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked him if he could drop me home (about another 15 miles up the road), but he replied “Uh, no, we’re not allowed to take passengers”, while stuffing my cash into his greasy pocket, and climbing back into his cab with his date\u00c2\u00a0(so much for the no passengers\u00c2\u00a0 rule!), no doubt happy that he could now afford to buy her dinner (probably at a taco stand…), and driving off into the night.\u00c2\u00a0 Dammit.\u00c2\u00a0 I should have gotten him to drive me to an ATM near my house.<\/p>\n So there I was, alone, at closed car dealership on the I-10, 15 miles from home, with $5 in my pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried calling home but the answerphone picked it up.\u00c2\u00a0 I left a message saying that if I wasn’t home\u00c2\u00a0in the morning to send out a search party, and set of hitch-hiking along the feeder road.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously none of the very few cars\u00c2\u00a0on the service road fancied picking\u00c2\u00a0up a seriously-pissed-off-looking guy, so I\u00c2\u00a0resigned myself to walking.\u00c2\u00a0 Two intersections later, to add insult to injury, the tow-truck driver passed me, apparently going my way anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 If I had a rock I would have thrown it.<\/p>\n After four or five miles\u00c2\u00a0I’d had enough. It was cold, and my feet were killing me. Thankfully I was within hobbling distance of a hotel, so I\u00c2\u00a0went in and asked them if they could order me a taxi, even though I wasn’t a guest (my backup plan was to just get a room and stay there).\u00c2\u00a0 They were happy to oblige, and half an\u00c2\u00a0hour later she turned up.\u00c2\u00a0 I noted happily as I climbed in that the taxi driver took credit cards, otherwise I would have had to resort to asking her to take me as far as $5 dollars would get me (which would have probably been to the end of the hotel parking lot, what with the after midnight surcharge and all…).\u00c2\u00a0Still, 10 minutes and $20 later I finally got home (at 1:30).<\/p>\n The car was at the shop for\u00c2\u00a0four days before they looked at it, and after a day of poking around they found some burnt-out wires under the carpet, and a short in the fuel pump system (which is about the last thing you really want shorting, unless you fancy rocket propulsion).\u00c2\u00a0 Thankfully the extended warranty covered the fuel pump and the diagnostics, which was the bulk of the cost, leaving me to pick up (only!) a $250\u00c2\u00a0charge for\u00c2\u00a0miscellaneous wires (at that price I’m guessing they’ve used gold-plated HDMI cables…).\u00c2\u00a0 Still, at least I’m back on the road again.\u00c2\u00a0 And not before time, as I’m driving the 300 miles down to Baton Rouge again on Monday, and I don’t fancy the towing fee back from there.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially if Amex send out the same guy and I end up sitting in my car on the back of the flatbed whilst he and his latest date check in to a motor lodge on my nickel!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been having a couple of issues with my car, recently.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason, when you turn the ignition, if it doesn’t start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57,48,58],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-amex","tag-car","tag-xm-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}