If you thought I was kidding about how cold weather affects my life, get ready.
It’s been a while. In the past two weeks, I’ve had the worst flu of my life and an exciting sinus infection which followed. Throughout the course of that, my car has been in the shop three times. It really blows my mind how the Jetta becomes barely drivable when the temperature drops below 50. Over the summer, I had no vehicular problems. Now, I have more than I can keep track of.
Part of it is unavoidable: you take your car into the dealership to get one problem fixed and they inevitably find several other expensive repairs needed. It’s become my habit to listen as the service rep lists off the four new ailments and their estimated costs, and then pay to fix whatever’s cheapest—which, lately, is never less than a couple hundred bucks.
Several weeks ago, just after the first snow, my car wouldn’t start. Always hoping to save a few bucks, I first had it towed to Meineke. I see those guys so many times a year, I might as well be family.
But naturally they determined that it was a problem only the dealership could fix: a security immobilizer had been tripped, so after paying a hundred bucks for that none-too-helpful diagnostic, I then had the car towed to the dealership. I ought to buy stock in triple A.
The dealership fixed the problem for $265 (!), and in the process found that my radio was drawing a current on the battery—so finally the mystery of why my battery dies twice a year is resolved. Fixing the internal problem with the radio would have been another $250, so I just had them disconnect the damn thing and called it a day. And, yeah, I miss music.
Less than a week later, I got into my car at 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon to find that some idiot, undoubtedly a drunken college student from my local alma mater, had, it looked like, taken a bat to my right side mirror. Even the brute strength of an alcoholic couldn’t manage this with bare hands. The frame was on the sidewalk and the innards of the mirror hung limply against the side of the car like a bloody stump.
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