Car trouble

So I've been meaning to write this car trouble story for over a week now... Sigh. The reason I haven't written it yet is probably two parts busy, one part procrastination. Make that four parts busy and one part procrastination... Two Fridays ago, DH was driving to work in the old car (as he usually does). For some reason I decided to take it easy that morning and leave a little later, so I was still at home, slowly getting ready when he got on the road. A few minutes after he left, the phone rings. It's DH: "The car died, and I am stranded in the middle of the intersection". In those moments, I am glad we finally broke down and got a cellphone, even though we barely ever use it :)

Anyway, DH called the tow-truck, but he asked me to come pick him up, so that he can get himself to work in the other car. I rushed into the shower, and a few minutes later I was out the door. I got to the intersection, with no car and no hubby in sight... I drove around in circles for a few minutes, hoping to find him in the immediate vicinity, but to no avail. So I kept going, and a few kms later, there he was, pulled over with the car acually running. Turns out the car eventually decided to start again, and DH left me a message at my work number (though I never checked it). But all's well that ends well, we swapped cars (at that point I was only maybe 3 kms from my work, so I could have walked the rest of the way), and he managed to get to work on time.

I had a few errands to run that day, but I wasn't all that concerned, since the car was running fine. I got all my errands done, and then after work went to a friend's place, for our almost-monthly "stitch and bitch" get together. A great time was had by all, and time flew past way too fast as usual. So here I am, heading home at around midnight, when all of a sudden, the car dies again. If I had any thoughts that DH had done something wrong in the morning and somehow stalled the car, I knew now that there's definitely something going on with the car itself. I was going 90km/h when all of a sudden the tach went to 0, and I had no more power steering (ouch!), and was slowly coasting to a stop. Definitely, this wasn't related to anything that I might have done.

Anyway, I come to a stop on a small residential street, right in the middle of a bus stop (I really didn't have much ch0ice in where the car decided to stop). That's when I remember that DH did not leave the cellphone with me... Luckily, there was a gas station right across the street, open 24h. So I get out in the rain, after attempting in vain to start the car again, and go to the gas station, where I meekly asked the attendant if I could borrow the phone. He was nice enough and gave me the phone, which I used to wake up DH, to get him to come down and rescue me from the cold and rain. You see, only DH has CAA membership, so he has to be there with the car to call the tow truck (if we want it done for free that is).

Anyway, to make a long story short, the tow truck showed up around 1am, at which point the car graciously agreed to start again, and since we were only a few minutes from home, we managed to get it all the way down the driveway on its own (with the tow truck following right behind). DH even thought he could get the car in the garage, so he stopped in front of the door, got out of the car to open the garage door, when bam! the car died again. At least at this point it was in the driveway, and we could just leave it there...

So it looks like the car just dies for a few hours at a time. We managed to get it down to our mechanic down the street, but he hasn't had a chance to take a look at it yet. Since the car is now 12 years old, we're trying to get used to the idea that we may have to say goodbye to it for good... Though we are still hoping it will not come to that. Mostly because it's such a fun car! We've been trying to think what we would replace it with if we had to, and can't come up with anything as fun (and within our budget). I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it :)

So that's my sob story of being stuck with a dead car in the rain...

Hope you're all safe from car trouble (and any other kind of trouble for that matter).