An Evening of Misadventures

Earlier today, I went out to find that my car is dead. It won't stutter, turn over- nada. So, I called William to ask him what I should do. Fortunately, there was nothing on my schedule that required me to go anywhere- just staying at home working on my dissertation- and so we decided to wait until William got home. He had suggested me going and taking a look to see if anything was "loose" and I told him that my doing that would probably mess the car up even more since I have NO IDEA what I am doing. After another tough day at work, William comes home and takes a look at the car. Everything is in order so we assume its the battery. But, neither one of us has jumper cables. So, we truck on over to Target and buy the longest set of jumper cables they have- 16ft. My car was parked in our apartment parking lot, with the drivers side facing a wall and then a space next to the passenger door. Well, a big truck parked right next to me, preventing William from pulling his car up right there. But, it said on the package that it could reach from the front of the car to another car behind it. LIARS. There is NO WAY that can work. Especially given the wall. We had William maneuver his car several times at several different angles to see if we could make it stretch, but it was just too short. There was no way that cable was 16 ft- they shorted us. (hehehe- I like the other implications.
We looked like we were struggling and so some neighbors asked us if we wanted their help moving my car to a different spot. William was hopeful that our final move of his car would work, so we thanked them and said we were all set. Then, this woman comes up to us and says, "Hey, you guys are Mormons". We were totally shocked because we never said anything to let them know that. It turns out that they live in the complex next to ours and have seen us at church. She introduced herself as Molly- which we later chuckled at because of course a Molly would come and help us- and that she would see us at church on Sunday. It just goes to show that you can meet fellow church members in any kind of a situation, even if it is jumping your car in the middle of a dark parking lot.

I'm actually glad that we didn't take their help because we did end up moving my car, but my car has this unique safety feature that I didn't realize. You cannot just move the gear into neutral. You have to pop open this secret compartment and stick your key in there before you can move it. However, the secret compartment has to be pried open- even a key wouldn't do it. Thus, I had to run back to the house to get a flashlight and our tool kit so that William could pry it open. But, the handy man that he is, figured it out and we moved my car. But, when we first attached the jumper cable to my car, my alarm starting going crazy. It took a moment before turning it off, so we think that might have been the problem, because I did not leave my lights on. That's a fact. It was the first thing I checked when I got in the car. So our guess is that maybe the alarm shorted, or it just decided to die and give us an adventure. Fortunately, it started up and so William and I then decided to go and pick up some dinner from "Pick up Stix", a chinese restaurant by our house, so that we could keep the car running.

William went inside while I waited in the car. He said that they were making up our order fresh and that it would be 15 minutes. Well, I think that they knew that we needed to keep our car running because it took them 35 minutes to get our food. William was fairly frustrated after all of this, but he didn't say anything to them and they gave us coupons for 2 free meals! From my car, I could see right into the kitchen and they were SO busy that night. The whole time everyone in the kitchen was running around non-stop to prepare the food fresh, so I understood why it was taking so long. The food was actually REALLY good, restoring my faith in Chinese restaurants here in California (after several previously bad experiences).

All in all, everything worked out alright, but it was just a long a frustrating day for William and so he crashed early tonight. I am just so happy that my car died at my apartment and not somewhere else because it would have been extremely inconvenient and a bigger hassle. And hey, at least we now have jumper cables, I know how to put my car into reverse, we got the battery charged, we met some more members of our war, and a free dinner out of it! So some good did come out of the misadventure struggles of the evening