My morning thus far...
I remembered to set my clocks ahead an hour last night and I got up this morning at the right time. But still, I missed church (my job!) today! Why? I filled up at the gas station up the road from me on the way to church this morning and three blocks from leaving the station my car dies. Just dies. Won't start up anymore. I coast off the road onto a side road and try a few times. It cranks strongly but will not start. I wait a little bit and try again. Same story. I begin to try to get in touch with the few people at the church whose numbers I have in my phone right now but since everyone is in Sunday School or running late because they forgot to change their clocks last night they do not answer. I do get ahold of my father, amazingly since he is a pastor, and he isn't able to give me much more of a diagnosis over the phone than I was able to figure out myself. We both agreed that it was probably a fuel line issue.

By this point I can get the engine to run for a second or second and half every few tries with starting it, but no more. I get a call from my pianist, I figured returning my calls but she was telling me she was running late. I asked her to cover for me at the church since by this point it was unlikely I would be getting there before the service starts. I get a call from someone at the church, concerned about me since I hadn't shown up and am able to get the number of a towing company from someone in the office there. (I got a small phonebook just last week or so from AT&T but hadn't put it in my car, so I had no good way of finding anyone. 411 is relatively useless at finding anything you don't already know the name of.)

So I call the tow company and they say it'll be about 30 minutes before they can get out there (Oh yeah, my church is on the other side of town from me and so is everyone who goes there, so they know numbers of stuff on that side of town. Still, at least I had a tow truck on the way). I keep trying to start the car, it doesn't act any different than before other than the fact that it is cranking less strongly since I am using up the battery each time I try.

The tow driver calls me and lets me know he is five minutes away, this is 45 minutes after I called them, 15 minutes into the service at my church. I try a few more times. Nothing. I try one last time and the car starts, sputters a bit, and then runs smoothly. I give it gas. It sputters a bit more and runs smoothly once more. I give it gas again and it runs smoothly. I shut it off and start it again. No trouble. The tow truck pulls up.

My car started one minute before the tow truck got there. Lovely.

He tells me he'll have to charge me $35 for coming out and asks if I want him to follow me home to make sure the car gets there. I gladly accept his offer and when I get home I try a couple more times to start it. It works fine. I gladly pay him the $35, happy that I will not have to figure out how to get around sans car and that I will not have to pay to have it fixed tomorrow.

Now it is 11:30, the service at my church is almost over and I am sitting at home posting on Blogger.

At least, as I was telling my neighbor when I got back here a while ago, this happened on this beautiful spring-like day rather than on last week's cold, damp, rainy Sunday morning. I can sit in my car for over an hour in 60 degree, sunny weather and still be happy. Had this happened last week I would be in a terrible mood.
- posted by Nick @ 3/08/2009 11:13:00 AM | 0 comments