I have written elsewhere about my cars and the adventures I’ve had with some of them.
But the fun hasn’t stopped yet.
Yesterday I was on my way to a local event when my alternator went out as I was crossing an intersection. I’ve had my share of hairy situations in cars. I would just as soon do without those, thank you very much. I was able to coast into the parking lot of a large service station and into a parking space on the little momentum I had left. I tried to start it again. No juice. I couldn’t even get my handy electric windows rolled up. Good thing we’re in an exceptional drought. Nothing likely to get wet.
I called my brother. He’d been out running errands, so might still be in town somewhere. Fortunately, he wasn’t far away. But it was Game Day for the local university football team, and a home game. Traffic was already waxing horrible. My brother suggested I go inside the service station store and get something to drink – it would probably take him a while to get through the traffic to get back to where I was.
It’s not like the alternator going out was completely unexpected. The car had recently started making a “new” noise and my brother had said he thought it was coming from the alternator. He said it might be about to go out in a matter of days or weeks, or it could run like that – making that noise – for months. It was weeks.
Well, so my plans for the morning were shot, as well as for most of the afternoon. When my brother picked me up, we first tried to get the car running again so I could try to drive it home. Didn’t happen. The next option was to go get a new alternator and bring it back and replace it in the parking lot. Thankfully, Subaru, knowing things like alternators tend to crap out on a regular basis, put parts like that in easily accessible locations on their engines. It only took a couple of different sized wrenches to get the old one off and the new one on, and without skinned-up knuckles to show for it.
And that should be the whole story, right? We got the car started, I drove it home. It will probably continue to run – albeit in fits and starts – for another 100,000 miles (it only has 194,000 on it now). But there’s more to this car, of course, so there’s more to the story. Along about the time I wrote the original “Karma” story, I’d been having issues with the tail-lights – namely that they weren’t working. That’s kind of a big deal when one works until 9:30 at night.
It wasn’t burned out bulbs or a bad fuse. My brother improvised a “patch” of sorts across a couple of fuses that made the lights work again. Excellent. Except when a few days later I couldn’t start my car. It started from a jump okay, so I went to work. It was winter then, and that night it got down to about 20 degrees with a wind chill down around 5. My car wouldn’t start. I got out, quickly propped up the hood, and got my mile-long jumper cables out of the back. I stood by my car, holding my jumper cables, and watched EVERY other car in the parking lot drive past me. Somebody could have stopped to help. Somebody could have paused, rolled down their window, and ASKED if I needed help. Apparently, I looked so self-sufficient, standing there with my jumper cables, that they ALL assumed I didn’t need any help. Like I’m going to jump-start my car without another car. (Obviously, this still pisses me off just a teensy bit.)
I had to call my brother, then wait the twenty minutes it takes to get from home to the junior college campus where I work. Fortunately, I was able to go back inside a building to wait where I wouldn’t freeze my ass, and everything attached to it, off.
After I finally got home, I took The Puppy out for a pre-bedtime potty break, and noticed that my parking lights were on. I thought, “what the hell?” Indeed. I don’t know if it’s true of all Subarus, but the two that I’ve had have had light switches connected to the ignition switch. If the key is turned off, the lights are off, even if the switch is on. I couldn’t remember leaving the key in the ignition switch when I got out. I pointed it out to my brother, who came up with the solution I’m using to this day. Whenever I park my car, I disconnect one of the battery cables. When I get ready to get back in and drive, I hook the cable back up. For short stops, like to put gas in it, I don’t need to disconnect the cable, but for anything longer than five or ten minutes, I do. Just to be on the safe side. It’s a pain in the ass. Good thing we’re in an exceptional drought. I’ve gotten slightly damp a couple of times having to stand in a brief shower while I tinker around under the hood of my car. How inconvenient it would be if we were actually getting rain on a normal basis.*
And that’s not all. I began to notice other oddities about the lights. Since I drive after dark, it’s hard not to have these things called to my attention. When I turn right, my dome light flashes on and off. The first time it happened, I thought I was seeing lightening in my rear view mirror. Then one night I was actually looking at the mirror when it happened and saw the light come on. Now sometimes one or another of the “door ajar” lights also flashes when I turn right. Another night as I was driving home, when I flipped on my high beams, the seat-belt light started flashing. It stopped when I dimmed my lights, and didn’t start again when I turned them back up, but – bizarre. My brother thinks we need to hire an exorcist. He may have a point.
*Being facetious, here. Obviously, I’d rather get soaked or have to wait a while before I go anywhere rather than have the horrible conditions we’re in this year continue another day.
Possessed?
