Friday, February 12, 2010

jump starting a car

So our lives hadn't been too crazy here lately until this last Tuesday night. I went to the mall at about 6pm to get a Valentines day gift for Blake. All day my car had been acting kind of funny every time I tried to turn it on so I wasn't super surprised when leaving the mall I discovered that the battery of my car was completely dead. So of course, what did I do? I called Blake. Unfortunately, neither he or I had jumper cables (lesson learned: need to buy some and keep them in our cars). So he had to call a law school buddy to borrow some.
About 20 minutes after I called him he arrives at the mall. It's about 7 pm at this time. We get our hoods open and find my battery very easily and then begin looking for his. Apparently, PT Cruiser's are built differently than every other car out there. And we could not find anything that even resembled a battery. We finally discovered something in the back right hand corner that said something about the positive connnection for jump starting a car. But it was pointing to a regular looking bolt that was sticking up out of something else. Here's a little picture of an engine to give you an idea:

See what I mean? So after trying to figure it out for about 15-20 minutes (It's now 7:20 and getting dangerously close to the start of the new LOST episode) we decide that we just are going to have to get another friend to bring their car. Meanwhile I am on the phone with my Dad trying to get his advice. Thanks Dad for being so patient! :)

So we call our friend Mallory, we absolutely love, and she comes with her car. We knew it'd take her about 15 mins. to get there so we go into the mall to get some food for dinner. Cause it is like 7:30 at this point. So while waiting for our food Mallory calls to say she is there so Blake goes out to meet her while I wait for our food. Thinking that they were well on their way to getting my car started I go out to meet them only to find that Mallory's battery is just as complicated. It had absolutely zero labels as to which part on the battery was positive and which was negative.

Of course, what do I do? I call my Dad again. I explain to him that the only discernable difference is that there is a cover on my battery over the positive and she has a cover over one of her's. So my Dad says that we should just assume that a cover means positive and take a risk. He was correct!! We got my car started!

So now it's about 8 (forget getting home in time for LOST) and my Dad recommends that we park my car in front of a car repair place so that we don't have to re-jump it the next day to get my battery checked out. Our food is getting cold so I want to hurry and the only place I could think of was Pep Boys. Now I loved the Pep Boys in Abilene, but the one here is AWFUL!!! I had my oil changed by them a few months back and promised I would never go back. However, I couldn't think of anywhere else and I just wanted to get home so to Pep Boys we went.

When we pulled up we discovered that they were still open so I sat in my car while Blake ran in to see if they could take a look at my car. Luckly they could so I pulled into the garage. Now you think at about 8:15 at night when NO ONE is there it wouldn't take more than 30 mins. to look at a battery, change a battery and pay for a battery. But no....the guy there checked our battery pretty quick, but from then until the time we were finished was about an hour. The guy at the counter was not very good at organization or multi-tasking and seriously lacked in customer service skills. All a very bad combination.

So needless to say and without further explination we got home around 9:30-9:45 with a new battery, but cold food and zero patience. We ate our dinner and then went to bed because we were so exhausted. At least we have a good story to tell and while at times we were a little frusterated with each other we made it through our first big frusteration as a married couple. And praise the Lord we had just gotten our tax return money deposited so the battery expenses weren't too big of a heartache. I guess there always is a little blessing despite all the frusterations. :)

1 comment:

kara said...

oh no!! that sounds frustrating... but from my perspective reading about it, i had a few laughs! :)

i missed the first episode of Lost too because of sing song! grrr