Car-ma chameleon

Yesterday, Hannita discovered that her car had been stolen. Is that not the most terribly sucky thing? She is now a statistic in street crime, a testament to the awful truth that there are real assholes out there doing real asshole things all the time just for the hell of it.


My story is not nearly as sad, but it is true. I left happy hour last night, hopped in my car and headed for home. I had made it about two blocks and was turning a corner when my car died. This is not an uncommon occurrence; my car periodically dies while idling or while turning corners, and normally I just throw it in neutral, start it back up, put it back in drive and move on. But when it died yesterday, it died. There was no restarting it, and I had it towed to my friendly local mechanic, silently cursing myself for never signing up for AAA.

I got a call bright and early this morning from the mechanic, who had already diagnosed my problem: timing belt. I thanked him for the speedy response and told him to fix it (to the tune of not cheap, but could have been worse) and then pondered the great irony that is my life.

I am no stranger to timing belt issues. Two years ago, while driving to my home state for a friend’s wedding, my timing belt went out. Let me tell you there is nothing more awesome than sitting on the side of the interstate for three hours waiting for someone to rescue you and drive you the mere thirty minutes left to your destination. I had the timing belt fixed by my home mechanic only to have it go out again, thanks to a slack job, two weeks later (hence the story of how I came to know my friendly local mechanic). When my car died that second time, I was at a certain busy intersection where I drive quite frequently.

My car died last night just across the street at the same intersection.

I am never driving there again.