July 18, 2019 – Thursday
I have a problem.
And, it’s sitting in my driveway. My 24 year old Honda Odyssey van is on its last legs (so to speak). I shouldn’t be surprised … given its age and that it’s driven this family and others and stuff around the country all these years going a whopping 226K miles (and then some).
It started smoking last month. I thought someone was having a BBQ on my way home from being off the island. Imagine my surprise when I came to a stop and smoke started billowing out from under my hood! Not exactly a good sign.
I limped to the ferry line … had 3 over 75 year olds tell me what I needed to do (all told me something different) … limped home … smoking all the way. But, I made it!
Time to get a new/er car. Sigh.
I let it sit in the driveway for a few days – hoping that if I just let it sit there it would regenerate itself into working order. It didn’t happen. So, I got it towed to the local shop (I will not go as far as to say they are good or reputable but they are on the island). When the tow truck driver looked under the hood, he was the one to assess the problem.
I had a dead rat against my fan/lodged into it, actually, and before it died, it chewed my lines and drank my antifreeze … and then got twisted in my front fan … hence the over heating and billowing of smoke, etc. It cost me $511 to remove said rat.
Sam had a dead opossum in her furnace a few months back. That cost me a lot more. What is it with us and dead animals in places they should not be? How long were both of us breathing in dead rodent fumes? Ew!
So, while the shop was fixing the lines and getting the rat’s dead/toasted body out of the fan – it was determined that I also have a leaking distributor … along with a few other things … and a cracked axle (that I knew about before). So, yeah – REALLY time for a new/er car.
But … I’m on an island and without much here to 1) look at 2) sit in 3) compare 4) test drive … I needed to go off island to the car dealerships “overseas”. So, my first dog-free day I ventured out (using a loaner car/thank you neighbors!). I went to every car dealership in the north area … even the ones that looked like if I bought a car with a dead rat in it it would be the best car on the lot.
Absolutely NO luck with Makoto, Alex, Manny or Spencer. I didn’t get the names from others. I just wanted some Purell.
A few days ago, my next dog free day and now with my own car, I ventured across again to go in a different direction. After waiting 2 hours to get off the island and turning into the first decent looking place, I met up with Paul. He surely would have lost to a sloth or a turtle in any race. The man was as slow as molasses in January. In an igloo. SLOW. We finally got out to a car I wanted to see … and he had grabbed the wrong set of keys. OMG. Torture would have been nicer.
The 800 year old Asian grandpa was the salesman at the next dealership. And while faster than Paul – I had to hold him up while we walked the lot. As I left he grinned at me and said, “I may be slow, but I’m not an asshole.” Slow yes, asshole no.
Next I met up with Tommy. A nice young kid who met me at the door and said he’d help me. Great. Someone who could walk without a walker and quickly and had the right keys! He showed me one car and then disappeared. Someone else came out and said they’d help me as T. was with a customer. Excuse me? I went back into the office and told T. that if he didn’t have time for me, he shouldn’t have met me at the door.
I grumbled off. This was not going well.
Over the course of the next 3 hours I met Larry, Steve, Ismael, Morgan, Komal and Matt and a handful of others whom I told had lost a sale because they didn’t even have business cards. As I left I said, “Vista Print … $12 bucks! Order now!”
Kudos to Matt for not being ancient, slow, pushy, impatient or an asshole. However, he didn’t have anything I wanted.
The problem I’m having is that I’ve been driving the same car for nearly 25 years. Modern technology has advanced (as far as I’m concerned) at the speed of light and I sit in these new/er cars and the dashboard might as well be one of a 747 Boeing airplane. Scary. Intimidating. So high tech. So many buttons/dials/screens!
I want simple. I am intimidated by my washing machine! Simple cars/dashboards are (apparently) a thing of the past. And, I’m on the shorter side … I sit in these cars/mini suvs and I can barely see over the steering wheel/hump/back up camera/everything else that is now lodged on the dashboard … and never mind about trying to see behind me! It’s one of the criteria that I can see out of the vehicle if I’m considering purchasing it!
So, here I am – back on the island (after another 2 hour wait to get back the other night!) – doing online research. Again. Baby suv? Small hatchback? New or used? Cash or 0% APR for 60 months? Do I want to buy something new knowing that right now, at this moment, 25 years after purchasing my last car that my best/most affordable option is still fossil fuel reliant? I thought for sure we’d be in Jetson-like hover crafts by now! Electric is not an option where I am. Do I want to go hybrid? Or do I just “get something” so that I can retire the Mom Mobile and think this through a few years down the road when the hybrids become better/more reliable/more affordable? Do I really want to sink $X into ANY car?
I honestly, back in 1995, never thought I’d have this car still (who would?!) … it’s taken us 12,136 miles short of taking us to the moon. (The moon being 238,900 miles from Earth!) This is a big deal. It’s been a great car. My kids were 8 and 10 when we got this car! We went on countless trips to Chicago … drove to the east and west coasts and everywhere in between on family vacations … drove to WA on my last move. Both kids learned how to drive in this car. I listened to countless hours of giggling in “the way back” when they were pre-teens – like I was just a chauffeur or completely invisible (or deaf). (What? Did they think I couldn’t hear them?)
We had some great times in that van … and here I am, getting ready to say good-bye. I’ll donate it to some organization. Maybe someone can fix it up. Maybe they’ll dump it. I don’t really want to know.
In any case – I have to find a new/er car cuz there is a problem in my driveway and it’s not resolving itself even if I ignore it (as I have been). I am a bit optimistic in hoping a new hover craft vehicle, that car of the future, will be on the market in the next few weeks … how I’d love to zoom around above the 200 year olds driving on this island!