The relationship between me, wheeled vehicles, canada and the detroit area is fairly simple. The combination of any of the three is almost always disastrous. Allow me to enlighten you...
Chaper 1: Snowstorm Ditch Party
sophomore year of college i was not fortunate to be in possession of a vehicle. However i did have a boyfriend who had a car. And would take time out of his also busy college schedule to come visit me, as my making it to NY was nigh impossible. Easiest way to travel from detroit to rochester is to go through canada. After one particular visit from him, he dropped me off at church and headed home in a snowstorm. It was evening and dark and after an hour i get a phone call from him saying he went offroad into a ditch and needed to be picked up. No injuries done, so we go get him and one more night is spent in detroit. The next morning we go to drive him back out to his car and lo and behold the car we mean to rescue him in wonapos;t start. So we get a neighbor to drive us. Lovely. Everything good.
Chapter 2: Un-bribed Canada Adventure
another year another visit. By junior year i manage to have inherited a vehicle from my great grandmother via my grandma. Itapos;s a lovely 91 Ford Taurus. It has itapos;s share of leaks and emissions as it is 16 years old. Still going strong, so not bad. Well on this visit the boy and i decide to go to canada once again. I had never been to a casino and Windsor was calling. We take my car and decide that dinner at applebees would be nice and enjoy a quiet meal. Outside at the car, it decides that it doesnapos;t want to start. At all. Not even a little bit. So we call triple A who directs us to CAA and after some great difficulty we manage to get a tow truck over to tow us across the border (because at this point a jump is impossible) so we get towed and deposited in the border patrol parking lot aka someplace weapos;re really not supposed to be (because i refused to bribe the canadian tow truck guy to tow us back to my place, bad move). After AAA fails to procure us another tow truck because apparently we are too close to the border and unable for people in NEBRASKA to understand where the Ambassador bridge is, a mighty angry officer comes over and gets a tow truck on the phone in 5 minutes and weapos;re back home and my vehicle gets some jerry-rigged wires to the battery and lo it works. I go home it gets fixed for real i return to detroit.
Chapter 3: The Last Journey of Old Lace
fast forward a couple months to one of the coldest days detroit has had in a while. My car refuses to start and iapos;m left practically frostbitten waiting for campus security to come because once again triple A has failed me. I get a jump and make it back to my place. By april my car is in bad shape. I decide to go home for a wedding and car swap with my parents so that i can make it back. I make it as far as the border. My car stalls out at customs, i have to be pushed through by border patrol STILL answer all the questions and then wait in the cutsoms parking lot for a tow truck to pull me a mile up the road to Canadian Tire. They tell me that itapos;s only a bad battery and connections. Half an hour later theyapos;re telling me that my engine has seized and either i buy a new engine or i scrap the car. So i scrap the car, call my dad who decides to drive out and pick me up (he laves at 6pm, gets in at 12 am, we turn around and drive back getting in at 6 am and go to the wedding at 11am) i end up driving my familyapos;s badass minivan back to detroit and eventually home at the end of the year.
Chapter 4: My Ignition Failure
after getting home with the minivan, itapos;s decided i need a car of my own for the summer months and beyond. My father graciously has been car searching since the mishap and finds a charming 96 Subaru Impreza Wagon. I purchase it spruce it up a bit over the summer and learn to drive stick, because it is a standard. Things are going great until i start to make the trek through canada. All of the sudden my key decides that it loves the ignition so much that it never wants to leave. So with my key stuck in the ignition i make my drive through canada, with my mother and i switching off at rest stops to make sure no one steals my car, not that they would. Canadians are quite nice. So we make it to detroit and move it without mishap. But i canapos;t possibly in good faith leave my car parked somewhere in detroit with the key stuck in the ignition. So we take it to the subaru dealership up in troy where they take a bit, they replace my entire ignition cylinder for me. And even leave me the old cylinder with the key stuck in it. It makes a great paperweight. However my car woes arenapos;t over yet.
Chapter 5: "Charge Rachael Too Much for a Clutch" Dealership Adventure
while my car was at the dealership i had them take a look at my cruise control. Becuase frankly driving a standard car for 6 hours without cruise control is painful. Seriously. Anyway while they were looking at that, they discovered my poor clutch was in a bad way, filled with oil from a leak somewhere in the engine. Kindly enough they told me so and said theyapos;d fix it for a mere 1400 dollars. Which is when i almost lost the contents of my stomach. Fortunately a relative of a friend is a mechanic. After many bouts of phone tag, we got to speaking directly to eachother via telephone. After relating to him my problems he promised to call me back with news of someone to deal with my dilemma. A week or so later (and a trip home coming up) he finally finds a guy to fix the thing. So i bring my car over to this shop and within a few days the vehicle is as good as new, with the right amount of work done on it and for half the price. (take that you god damned money grubbing subaru dealership)
Chapter 6: My Bike Cannot Handle Sidewalks Sidestory
if you recall i said at the beginning of this ridiculous saga that it was me and "wheeled vehicles" and i did not lie. This year i thought it would be wonderful in the temperate weather if i had a bike to get me places. And so thatapos;s what i did. I brought up my momapos;s 20 year old bike, trussed it up with some new wheels and a wash and brought it with me here to detroit. It was wonderfully handy for a while, pleasant to ride and quite convenient as my car was out of commission. However about a week after i had been at school and without my car i decide to ride my bike to church one fine sunday afternoon. However as i make a turn onto the sidewalk in front of the detroit historical museum i get launched off my bike. Uninjured i pick myself up, dust myself off and get back on my bike only to discover it wonapos;t go forward. The problem? my rear wheel had been tacoed. Not completely folded up, but it certainly looked like a tortilla chip and quite unable to move forward. So, not wanting to be late to services, i wheel my bike to church, get told after Mass that itapos;s not something that can be fixed there and then wheel it back to my apartment where it has leisurely occupied our front hallway for the past month.
Epilogue
allapos;s well that end well i suppose. Iapos;ve gotten my car back finally. Fixed properly as well, new ignition, new cruise control, new clutch. Though that part is a bit tricky. If you didnapos;t know all clutches are terrible unique. So even if you know how to drive standard it takes some getting used to to drive another standard car. So getting a new clutch is like getting a new car, and i new to get acclimated once again. Which is tiresome. I stall out so much. However itapos;s nothing like learning for the first time and iapos;m sure iapos;ll adjust quickly. Iapos;m just relieved to have my wheels back.
as for my bike, itapos;s still collecting dust in the front hall. However iapos;ve found someone to take a look at the wheel properly and fix it (hopefully) possibly for minimal charge. I am however, optimistic.
and so dear friends, that is the epic saga of vehicles, canada/detroit and myself. As grand a tale as it makes iapos;ve had my fill of mishaps. And with this latest incident iapos;m hoping that this destructive relationship turns itself around....if not well then wish me luck next weekend as i trek back to rochester for final hangouts with my brother (who is off to the armed forces) and birthday celebrations.
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