The day Friday was truly more gruesome than the day before....the alternator shipped to me at great expense from Ohio was not the right one and the person at the garage quoted a price of over three hundred dollars to get a replacement, which did not include the cost of labor to put the new one in and did not get the car finished before Monday at the earliest. This discovery was made only after the car was raised on an outside rack, taken ALL apart and the old alternator removed. Frantic to find another option to get the car repaired, a call was made to the emergency service that I have been paying for right along but never used....they pretty much said they could tow the car from one place to another, but that was all. They did however, call around to several chain stores in the area and located one that would be able to locate the part and install it for about the same price of the quote for the part alone at the other garage. The car was put back together, and the garage charged over a hundred dollars for the labor that they did to take apart the car and put it back together. They did, however put a charge in the battery which got the car to the Firestone station that agreed to do the work. Arrived later than expected there, so the car was not worked on on Friday night and the task was set aside to Saturday morning.
Waited all morning to hear something from the Firestone station about the status of the car. When they finally made contact it was to inform that the alternator that they had received WAS THE WRONG ONE and that they were waiting on another one to finish the job. Morning totally shot and afternoon waning as well, the call finally came at nearly 4 PM that the car was done, but the person on the other end of the phone was emphatic that tires were needed on the car as well. Declining tires, the car was finally back on the road at a cost of about three hundred dollars, at nearly 430 PM Saturday afternoon.
Just after crossing the Florida/Georgia border, the car began to vibrate and pull. I guided it off across two lanes of traffic to the shoulder and stopped. I exited the car on the passenger side and observed that the passenger side tire on the back was totally flat and the sidewall was visibly shredded. New tires, indeed! I cleaned out the luggage from the back of the car and stuffed it all inside the passenger compartment, then located the scissor jack, lug wrench and other assorted stuff needed to change the tire. Just as I was getting ready to let the car back down from the jack onto the economy spare, the Deputy Sheriff arrived to see if I needed assistance. He helped me get the scissor jack closed up and out from under the car and assured that the lug nuts were securely tightened. So, for the next thousand miles, through the mountains of the Carolinas and Virginia, I drove 65 miles an hour on three regular tires and an economy spare. I drove as much as I could possibly tolerate during the night, stopping to sleep in a rest area at about midnight. I awoke again at 2 AM Sunday morning, and drove until I was in danger of falling asleep on the mountain curves, again in a rest area at about 445AM. As the sun was rising again, I started out, driving straight through, with the exception of detours to purchase gas with my very tight and rationed amount of remaining money. The drive was arduous and stressful...even now I cannot recall much of it other than knowing that all the noise there was inside the car was my breathing and the sounds that the car made as it moved along the steep mountain roads.
My ilk, upon my arrival, barraged me with the happenings of the previous days of my absence, and although I would like to share mine with them as well, I will really need several days before this series of events coalesces into any sort of cohesive or interesting story. For now, I have photos by the gross that I am not really inclined to sort or post right now, and a rambling diatribe that will take a long time to finesse to really do it justice....
Suffice it to say, I am home, very poor, but home.....I will take a stab at a better and much more colorful telling of this week passed, after the impact of it has lessened somewhat...till then
much love to you
v
The tone today, low key, a reflection of the mood that began last night. Slept in, and when I finally got up, went out for a bit to take care of a few errands and help the firstborn get ready to do more work on vehicles (did I mention that the oil pump on the Jeep went bad?....uh, yeah...it did...) He is outside in the fifty degree temperatures and drizzle of Ohio today, rebuilding the pump, packing it with petroleum jelly (hmmm...that is what the directions say to do, anyway) and getting the thing fixed. After that, he has sworn on a stack of bibles that he will be getting that damned econo-spare off my car. The young one had his first clinic for the UT drumline today...he and two other percussionists from NV went down to campus to spend the morning and part of the afternoon there, getting prepped for next fall and their full fledged participation in the UT Rocket Drumline. There are two more sessions on the next two Saturdays, so much more to learn yet to come.
