An Exercise in the Ridiculous

So, this happened last-last Friday (the Friday of the May 2-4 long weekend, aka Victoria Day weekend for my non-Canuk friends). Sorry for taking so long to share it with you... I hope you find it as amusing as I did. Coz I really did (thanks goodness, or else I would have been mad, mad, mad!)

That morning was just ridiculous. I took the day off to paint the guest room (in-laws visited, and then my Mom stayed with us). Realized Thursday night that I needed another gallon of paint. No worries, Rona is open at 7am, I can go before the hubbub has to go to work.

I get up Friday morning, head out about 7.20. Have a bit of a hard time starting the car (weird), but then it starts, I head out. Plan: get paint, get Starbucks, go home, see hubs off to work, paint. I get the paint, go back to the car, and it won't start. And won't start. And won't start.

Now, last summer we had an issue with the microchips in the keys, so I was wondering if it was the same problem. I call the hubs, he says he'll bike over (the Rona isn't far, thank goodness!) with his keys. I head to Starbucks (and they take their sweeeeet time). I get back, hubs has arrived, he can't start the car, thinks the battery is dead. I find a very nice guy with a giant pickup who agrees to give us a jump (thank goodness we have jumper cables.) Hurray! We can start the car back up, and hubs can go to work!

Except the car won't start. The engine isn't turning over, even. So it's not the battery. The nice man wishes us well and we release his vehicle. We now suspect the starter. We're right near a Canadian Tire, but hubs wants to take it to the dealership instead. Okay, fine, I guess that will work...um, except for the car not starting thing.

Here's the fun part: We have a standard. The parking lot is on a slight incline, and we're parked at the top. So hubs tells me to put the car in 2nd, he's going to push it down the lane, and when he says, I should pop the clutch and it should start. So I get in, he starts pushing to get the car out of its spot, and the steering wheel locks all the way over to the left and I'm going to crash the damn car. I gesture frantically, he comes over, points out that I still need to put the key in the ignition (DUUUH!!!!), and pushes the car back up the incline. We try again, get going, and START THE CAR!!! I didn't think it would work... it was awesome.

So I drive in a loop (thinking "don't stall, don't stall, this would be the worst time to stall"), come back to where he is, and we try to fit the bike in the back of the car. It won't fit. So I ride the bike home, he drives home and drops off the paint, and heads out to the dealership and then to work.

So I paint the guest room, love the colour, and all is well. Get a call from the hubbub that the dealership needs to order a part, so we're in a rental (paid for by them, hurray for the warranty) all long weekend. It was a Chrysler 200, and it sucked.

Ours was silver. And huuuuge. And unweildy. Thanks, Chrysler, for the image.

Tuesday they don't have the part. Wednesday they get it in (yay!) and on the way home from the dealership, hubub realizes the spedometer isn't working... and the dealership was closed. So we take is back again and they finish fixing it. Hurray for having our own car back!