ABCDEnough

July 28, 2019

When it rains, it pours. And hails.

The Monday before a trip planned to begin the following Sunday, I took my car in for its state inspection. On the drive there, the check engine light came on, showing transmission fluid overheating. They could reset it, they said, but the inspection requires data so they couldn’t perform it until I’d driven fifty miles.

During the fifty miles, the check engine light came on again. It went off after the car had sat in the garage overnight and didn’t come on when I started it again. I called but the next service appointment wasn’t until the following week, when we planned to be in another state and our inspection would be expired. They suggested I leave it all day Friday, which I did. They inspected it and passed it, and fixed some wiring leading to the transmission temperature sensor. They didn’t charge for the wiring.

Good thing, since the light came on again on my drive home. I called and was assured it was safe to drive on a trip and they’d try again on my return.

Sunday, the house was awfully warm. The house’s air conditioning wasn’t cooling. This prompted us to leave early, breaking the very long day’s drive into a half a day Sunday afternoon and a regular day Monday.

As we backed out of the driveway, we saw that bees were swarming their favorite spot, which had required an exterminator the year before. No time for that now.

We were nearly an hour away from home, the check engine light on, when the warning chime for a dangerous condition sounded and the panel showed us with no data from the sensor. Then a dial showed, the temperature at the middle. Jump to the maximum. Disappear, no data. Middle again. Maximum. The whole time the chime was sounding about every 60 seconds. We could not make a trip like this.

So we drove home—the house was really warm now—and put our luggage into the other car, which is fifteen years old and needs a muffler. We backed out a second time, noting there were at least ten bees gnawing their way under our siding. The person who’d be picking up our mail wasn’t going to like that.

Nearly two and a half hours after we’d initially left, we were on the road again. We wouldn’t reach our hotel before dinner, so where should we stop? We discussed revisiting a restaurant we’d enjoyed well enough for lunches in past trips.

When we arrived, it had gone out of business. There were two other restaurants near the exit. One had an hour wait, the other a half hour. We didn’t want to lose that much time.

We drove past the major city and its immediate suburbs and saw a chain restaurant that didn’t have a full parking lot. Good enough—barely.

Over dinner, we checked our email and had a message left at 7:46 pm. on our landline back home from Home Depot in Watertown, Massachusetts. We don’t live there, but our daughter isn’t far. I texted her; she’d been waiting all day for them to email and text her at her own number that her order was ready for pick up. No, she hadn’t given the landline number at a place she hasn’t lived for a dozen years. Her last name isn’t the same as ours since her marriage. How they’d gotten that number and why they ignored the one she gave remains a mystery—but there was no mystery that the store was closed for the day.

Our hotel check-in went smoothly enough, but there was a wait for the elevator, because one wasn’t working. I’m in the hotel now, mulling over our day.

A, the air conditioning broke

B, the bees are swarming our front door

C, the car was undriveable despite being in for service twice that week

D, our dinner choice was impossible, and so were back-ups in the vicinity

E, the elevator was out

F, Home Depot fucked up on who and how to notify an order was ready

I can’t wait for G.