All woah, no go

This morning I decided it'd be a great time to go to town. It snowed yesterday, and today was supposed to be pretty clear til the afternoon, then more snow was coming. I wanted some paint, some primer, and better caulk. And then the truck wouldn't start. FUCK!

I will admit that I texted G to see WTF to do. When the brakes went out, I snapped into my "what's the next rational step" crisis mode, but today? WAAAAHHHH. Hands flapping in the air, totally helpless. G was like "call the dealership and they'll send a tow truck" and I got back on track.

I thought maybe it was the battery, but that truck was dead like a dead thing. The window I'd left half-down two days ago wouldn't roll up, the doors wouldn't lock or unlock, and it was clicking. There was a strange clicking noise coming from behind the freakin' glove box when the key was not being turned. As soon as I turned the key, the truck got quiet as a grave.

Anyway, it was weird. I so desperately wish this was a "hahah Funder is bad at trucks" story, but it's not. I called the dealership, who gave me the number for Ford Roadside Assistance. Once I got through the "are you in danger do you want us to call 911!" voice tree, a pleasant dispatcher confirmed all my info and gave me a 45 minute estimate. I ate some scrambled eggs, sulked briefly, and packed the iPad and some crap in a bag.

The tow truck showed up in 30 minutes. The truck was so dead he couldn't get it out of park, so he had to disconnect the linkage (?) to yank the truck out of the garage, but he was pretty pro. We rolled out through the snow (yes, it was snowing) and headed to the dealership. The service guy at the dealership is from Middle Tennessee so we got along great, and he thought maybe the alternator had died. He plopped me down in the waiting room and I reread most of the latest Dresden Files novel.

About 3 the service guy came and got me. There is something worse wrong with the truck - they can't get it out of park. They hooked the linkage thing back up, and got power to it to crank it, but it's stuck in park. WTF. Truck. I had your woah fixed less than a week ago. You are two years old, which is entirely too young even in planned-obsolecence 21st century America for you to die. You have not even reached 27,000 miles (as far as I remember, because you wouldn't light up at all this morning.) I'd like for you to both go forward and stop, when I ask, within the laws of physics.

Anyway, Middle Tennessee gave me a loaner car. Hah! Stupid Future Ford gave me a lame Yaris rental; this dealership gave me one of their very own Fusions. At least the turn signals and stuff are in the right place, but it's still a car and I don't like it. It's like a foot off the ground with tiny windows and front wheel drive and I bet it won't tow more than 1500 lbs and it sucks.

Still, I was so grateful to have wheels again that I went straight to my favorite pizza place and bought a pepperoni and pancetta pizza, then stopped at a grocery store for a bottle of bourbon. Then I drove home in my tiny perilous car and had pizza and a drink and life is not so frustrating or bad right now. :)

They've changed the forecast every 30 minutes since I got home. It looks like tonight's forecast is "a hell of a lot" south of Reno and "quite a bit" up here north of Reno. They won't get my precious truck fixed before the roads get plowed, but it's still pretty annoying.

A note on the difficulty of moving around the US and buying liquor:

So I'm from Mississippi, which has some of the most regressive liquor laws that I'm aware of. You can get beer anywhere (unless it's a dry county), but wine and liquor have to come from package stores (see above re: dry counties) - and package stores only sold liquor, no mixers or cups or ice. I lived in Virginia, which had state-owned ABC (alcoholic beverage c-something) stores - same idea. Tennessee was downright progressive - the liquor stores also sold "big" beers, and, IIRC, grocery stores sold wine. When we moved to Ohio we were hysterically amused by the shockingly liberal liquor laws - Kroger had a liquor aisle! And you could buy liquor on Sundays! So we were kind of expecting it when we headed west to Nevada - you can buy any kind of drink you want, any time of any day, from any store at all here. I used to go a hairdresser who'd offer me beer or wine while she cut my hair!

So after years of "if you want to drink, you have to go to the package store for the liquor and then next door to the grocery store for the mixers," you'd think it'd be really easy to pick up some whiskey in Reno. It's technically simpler, but there's a whole new level of complexity - if everyone sells everything, you're basing your decision primarily on price and quantity. I could get airline bottles of Maker's Mark for $7 a pop at the gas station, or I could get a 1.75 liter at Costco for $35, or I could find a grocery store and get something in between for an in-between value. I ended up stopping at a grocery store and paying $45 for a 1.75. It was worth it to get home quicker in the snow - everybody else had the same idea, and 395 was horribly backed up and slushy.

Mah truck :(

So I went and rode yesterday, in the outdoor in the Imus saddle. Well, I didn't ride much - we ended up doing a lot of groundwork beforehand, but I did eventually get to ride around. Still forming an opinion about the saddle, and I did orginally have more to say but my truck tried to fall apart on the way home.

I knew I'd been needing new brake pads soonish, but it was never a good time, what with the moving and the Champ dying and all these other miscellaneous expenses that managed to get bumped to the top of the line. But yesterday my truck started making really ominous grinding-metal noises when I turned the steering wheel, and definite bad-brake vibrations when I pushed the brake. So I worried about it all night.

We drove it over to a shop today and we're dropping just over $1000 on it. Needs new brake pads and rotors (ffffffff), a new U-joint, and I'm getting them to change the spark plugs too. I know, spark plugs are usually a home-mechanic level repair, but the #5 and #6 spark plugs are buried deep in the block behind the front driver's tire and brake assembly. They are due at 80k, and I was not looking forward to trying to do them myself.

Ugh.

Another epic fail!

What's wrong with this picture?




Look, here's a closeup.




Yeah, I kinda shot my truck. But not with a gun, I'm actually very very gun safety conscious! I accidentally shot my truck with an arrow.

I went over to my friend's house and he was like "Look at this bow I just got; it's totally badass!"

Me: "That's awesome!"

Him: "You wanna shoot it?"

Me: "Hell yeah!"

I try to draw it and damn it's hard as hell to draw a 40 lb bow. Waaaay harder than I thought it would be.

Me: "I don't think I can pull this."

Him: "Yes you can! PULL HARDER!"

My tomboy rage boils over and I pull as hard as I can and then slip and THWUNK shoot my truck. I burst out laughing and he was mortified and said he'd pay for the window. I'm not going to let him; I'm the one who a) wanted to shoot the bow and b) carelessly shot my own truck.

After shooting the truck we went off away from everything we cared about and I kept trying til I finally shot a tree. Bows are cool. Don't point them at anything you care about. Hell, don't point them within 45 degrees of anything you care about!



I think the Rangemaster sticker really makes the composition of the photo.