The other week, in one night, I had a trio of ridiculous dreams. So ridiculous that you half know it’s a dream, and it’s a ridiculous situation, but you keep on dreaming it anyway.
I’ve forgotten the first.
In the second, someone was knocking at my front door and trying to look through the frosted glass while waiting to be let-in, and I, then undressed and taking cover at the corner, kept calling out “Who is it?”, but they wouldn’t answer. You can’t actually see anything more than abstract shapes through my front door anyway. Ridiculous.
And in the third dream, my car (which has worked perfectly in the almost-year I’ve had it except for an electric window going kaputsky — ch-ching!) was behaving really sluggishly, and accelerating ludicrously slowly, especially up hills. Ridiculous.
Then last week in real life it started happening. On cold days, 5 degrees and below. Stalling. Shuddering. Sluggish. Blah.
See, life is full of gambles. I gambled my money away when I bought the car. I’ve gambled that it’s worth trekking across town to the dealer I bought it from every six months to keep the warranty up-to-date. Even though it seems like the warranty is worded in such a way that there are so many exceptions that they might never be liable for any repair costs.
So yesterday morning I woke at sparrow’s fart and headed out the door just after 7am, which is normally about the time I’m getting up, in a failed attempt to beat the traffic. At least I may have beat some of it; it took about 45 minutes to get to the dealer. I’m glad I normally avoid driving in rush hour.
Dropped it off for the six month checkup and so they could look at the stalling/shuddering.
The verdict? A bill of $245, of course — and that included no charge for the fault. On the one hand, just part of the exorbitant cost of personal motorised transport; on the other, quite low for a visit to the car dealer for a service.
According to the receipt (which is mostly made up of the usual mechanic gibberish) they checked the car’s computer history for misfires. Yes, apparently this humble 9-year-old Astra has a black box recorder. Apparently it gave them enough information to tweak things.
Just hope it worked. I hate those early mornings.
PS. Lunchtime: Rae has a rant about her drive to work.
2 replies on “Dream machine”
As soon as my offspring flew the nest I sold my car. I am very happy that I did so. I love my bikes and I reckon public transport is a great way to get around for minimal cost. I live in a zone-1/2 overlap, which is nice. On an unrelated matter, I made the front page of this week’s Caulfield Glen Eira Leader following a battle with prostate cancer earlier this year.
Those early mornings help make the slide into the evening so much easier though!