Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Bumper Cars

My brother's car stopped working last night and he was talking about pushing it home from where it stopped. It reminded me of when I used to have a car, and one situation in particular.

I was driving home with Jon from SFU on one hot, sunny afternoon. My car's fuel pump had been making loud buzzing noises, so I knew that something was wrong, but I hadn't got around to fixing it yet. So we were driving along 96th ave and the engine dies as if it ran out of gas. So we coast along for a few seconds, and I start the car up again. We drive for a little further, and the same thing happens. I repeat this a few times wondering how long it will last, and thinking how bad this is for the starter. Then (if I remember correctly) it wouldn't start anymore. I know a downhill section is coming up so hopefully we can coast to there. We do and end up going for quite a ways after the hill. Since the car isn't working and we're only a 5 min drive from home I turn off so we can push it home on the side roads. So Jon and I are pushing and this pickup pulls up beside us and asks where we're going and offers to push the car in his truck. So I figure why not? Fortunately his bumper was just about at the same level as mine so it worked out decently. It's an interesting feeling when you're sitting in a car and a truck bumps into from behind and starts pushing. It was only rough getting started, once we were moving it was quite smooth. We had to go through stop lights and turn a few corners as well, but the the guy in the truck was pretty good at just nudging my car along. We got to my street where I told the guy in the truck we could just push it the rest of the way and thanked him for his help.

Cars are a source of adventure, but it usually comes at the cost of a lot of time trying to fix it yourself, or a lot of money to have someone else fix it.