This week has turned out to be sort of a working vacation, and most of the work has been on Hank, my car. I took Hank into the shop for an oil change and what I like to think of as a “car physical” on Tuesday, and had him returned to me $300 in repairs later. That’s approximately half the blue book value of my car. And it’s not that they were all like, “The young pink haired girl clearly knows nothing about cars, we will rip her off,” because my dad’s the one who dropped the car off. He also okayed the repairs on the phone, so presumably all of the things they fixed are actually parts of a car.
I am a simple girl, and I like to get something tangible in return for my money. It does make me feel a little better that my car is $300 less likely to explode and kill me, but whatever they replaced inside that engine is not fulfilling the “Oooh, shiny” factor that I like in my large purchases. The things that make the most difference to me are the things I did myself – replacing the wiper blades (although my mom did a lot of it) and putting more air in the tires.
This whole tires thing is completely weird to me. Like, the air slowly goes away? And I have to put more in? And my front passenger tire went really, really flat a couple of weeks ago, and so I took it to the gas station and put more air in, figuring it would just be a temporary solution. Because, in my mind, if the old air goes away, the new air will probably go away too. But the new air didn’t go away! The tire is fine now! I even had the garage guys check it for leaks, and they said it was fine. This just seems to violate all of the laws of science & logic as I know them.
I have never been a big fan of cars and driving. Cars have always sort of struck me as big scary fast death machines. I avoided getting my license until I was 18, and then I promptly hightailed it to a town in Ohio where everything you could possibly need was within a three block radius. Then I moved to Philly, where I could take SEPTA everywhere. So I’m still adjusting to this Southern California car culture. At first, I mainly spent all of my driving time alternating between fear that my car would explode and kill me and fear that I was totally lost. I’ve gotten over that, and have even begun to feel a certain fondness for Hank. He takes me to buy groceries, and to school on Sundays, and to the bar. He’s sort of like a pet, except instead of being furry and amusingly psychotic, he takes me places. Of course, if he keeps needing crazy expensive repairs, I may have to take him out behind the barn and shoot him.