takin' care of [more car] business

I feel like I write about my car a lot. This isn't really a problem, I suppose, except that I feel it is a tad bit deceiving. While I do probably personify my car more than your average girl, Stella usually doesn't play this active of a role in my thoughts and life. But when a car acts up as much as mine has been doing in the past year, especially these past few months...well, it certainly causes a stir. (And let's just be honest, she's loving the blog-fame.)

On my recent trip to SC, I had quite a bit of car trouble. On the way to a wedding, I started to notice that on the sharper turns, I was having difficulty turning the wheel. There weren't a whole lot of these turns, so at first I just thought I was imagining it. (Don't you imagine difficulty in turning every now and then?) Then a little bit later, after another particularly sharp turn, I noticed both my brake and battery lights where aglow. I figured this wasn't good. ...But of course, I kept driving. (I have a tendency to be late to weddings; this was NOT going to be another mark in that tally.)

Then a little bit later, I noticed the "ABS" light was on. Now I'm no car guru, but I know that this stands for Anti-lock Brake System, and that this is REALLY not good. ...But I kept driving.

I am now 8 miles away from the wedding, my speedometer and another meter (something to do with gears and the engine) start to drop to 0 and then pop back up. My radio begins to flicker. Then the speedometer begins to spend considerable time on "0mph." ...And yet I keep driving. (Although now I will say that I began to repeat over and over, "Please don't let me die, please don't let me die. This is a really dumb life decision, to keep driving. If you die it will totally have been preventable and all your fault and you should probably get a Darwin award. ...Oh please don't let me die.")

Praise the Lord (really, I mean this, I'm not just using this phrase in the typical southern way), I made it to the wedding. Barely. I parked, turned off the car...and couldn't get the key out of the ignition. But like I said, I REALLY didn't want to be late to the wedding, so I slipped the keyless entry remote off the keychain, locked up, and went to the wedding. Afterwards, in between the ceremony and reception, I went back out to my car to see if I could figure out the damage. ...yeah, I couldn't get it unlocked. When your battery is completely dead, the whole automatic unlock for the doors thing doesn't work. Just fyi.

Suffice it to say I left my car in the middle of nowhere, got a ride back to Clemson (where all of my overnight things were NOT), got up the next morning, was picked up by my angelic parents, and drove an hour back to the farm where the wedding was (feeling pretty gross, I might add, as I had not brushed my teeth with a toothbrush for over 24 hours at this point). Turns out my alternator belt was almost non-existent. It was 1/16th of an inch wide. ...It's supposed to 9/16ths of an inch wide. That's a half-inch difference. (Yes, I was a math major. Look at me, I can subtract!) Anyways, my amazing and wonderful father (of whom I still believe is amazing and wonderful even when he is NOT fixing my cars) fixed it all for free. I then drove home to Huntsville.

...A few days later, I had to jump my car to get it started. A fluke? ...no. The past few days I have had to jump my car every time I started it. At this point, I'm thinking it's one of two problems: either a) when I drove my car to the point of exhaustion before the wedding, I so completely ran down my battery that it was permanently useless. b) the alternator belt was too loose and was not doing it's job of charging my battery while I drove.

So today I took it to AutoZone, where they test batteries for free. Turns out my battery is fine, the connection was just obstructed with some junk and so my battery wasn't fully charging while driving. After "James" at AutoZone fixed this for me, he said we should jump my car just to check the alternator. So I pulled out the handy-dandy portable battery car jumper thing (I have no idea what it's actually called), hooked it up myself and jumped my car, as I've been doing for the past few days.

...When I finished, James had this look on his face. Our conversation went as follows:

James: You have one of those?

Me: Haha, yeah, I've needed it.

James: Where did you buy that?

Me: Uh, I borrowed it from a friend; I'm not sure where she bought it. Why, is it not the normal kind?

J: No.

(After I unhooked everything and put it back in my car...)

J: Where were you when I was twenty years younger?

M: Haha, I don't know. Except I do, but I was three.

J: Haha, you probably weren't even born yet.

M: Not correcting him is probably a good idea here. ...this feels familiar...funny that last time I was saying I was older, and now this guy doesn't even think I'm 20. Hahaha.

J: Are you from here originally?

M: No, I'm from South Carolina. Hollaaaaaa. *Insert other state pride sentiments here.*

J: Well this here is a redneck EMT.

M: Really? What does that even mean?

J: Yeah, this is a redneck defibrillator for your car.

M: Oh, hahaha. Nice. Apparently I get street cred from car guys for knowing how to jump my own car with a device that isn't even mine. Awesome.

James then finished giving me instructions about what to do with my car, then said he was going to give his fellow employee (who apparently is from SC as well) a hard time. I'm not really sure why. And then I left. And laughed a lot.