My car had major work done on it last Friday. It’s old, the family minivan with its age spots, the kids now off to university; it’s still here in part because our out-of-pocket medical expenses the last two years were more than my husband’s Prius had been.
My daughter and I had an errand we were going to run to Oakland and then San Carlos on the way home, some happy gallivanting with a little bit of bakery bribery to celebrate her being home.
And every time we thought about getting off our duffs and going and actually doing all that the last two days…somehow, Monday, it just didn’t feel like today was the day. Eh, Californians don’t know how to drive in the rain, let’s give it a pass. Nor Tuesday. Hey–let’s see if I can see Shadow take off on two wings and a prayer, I really do want to see him go. I sat tight and wound 2300 yards of a Colourmart.com cone into a hank, something that didn’t require looking, eyes glued to the unfolding falcon scene in the afternoon while still doing something useful.
But I really did need to get to the post office, so at least I finally got that done after the fledging. I then ran a quick errand to Trader Joe’s in the opposite direction. I didn’t hear it the first few miles…
But which is why my car went straight back into the shop. They immediately took responsibility and told me they are not charging me: the power steering pump apparently cracked while they were working on other things and they didn’t notice–they were just glad the fluid had lasted long enough to get it back in there for me to say hey, what’s this new and rapidly growing noise? They told me on the phone this morning that it had completely drained out in their driveway and how glad they were that everything was okay.
Now imagine us on the freeway with all the freeway sounds drowning it out at first and then no place to pull over and suddenly no steering. We might well have been in the middle of the bridge over the Bay.
Someone was looking out for us. Not to mention all the people in all the cars that would have been around us.