Saturday, March 06, 2010

Shake it Up


The title and artist just could not fit together more perfectly for this post. Usually I try to make one fit, but two? That's crazy talk!

Poor little Viggo, my Volvo V50 (turbo!). The last few weeks, it is like he has had early on-set Parkinson's Disease that went into full Essential Tremor. I mean, I could go around driving and singing, and no matter what the song, it always sounded like I graduated from the Belinda Carlisle School of Music.

I lived with it as long as I could and decided he needed an alignment....or so I thought.

I'm not a car geek. I'm not useless around some of the mechanics, but I'm not good at diagnostics. So I'm explaining to the car guy, as I made my appointment, what the symptoms were. He flatly told me it wasn't an alignment issue, that I had more than likely broken a belt within at least one tire.

Yayyy, I thought. It sounds cheaper than getting the car realigned.

FAIL. He was right. I was wrong.

I ended up having to have all my tires replaced and because it is Cleveland (you read about my potholes, right?) I went ahead and got the alignment too. And an oil change. And a new air filter. The mechanic calls and asked if I ever had it replaced.

I dunno. I assumed those few dozen times I had Volvo service the car while it was under full warranty, or when they replaced the engine, that they swapped out the filter. The new mechanic bets they had not.

All little things that add up to one big bill.

Granted the tires weren't cheap or little, but to be fair, I've had the car for five and a half years and have never changed the tires, so they were kind of due. My friend Sal, who does know a lot about cars, wondered how I was even driving on them. Fair enough.

So yesterday morning, I dropped the car off at 07:00 and then walked the mile and a half home, because as you read yesterday, I've become "husky". Denton could have followed me and driven me home, but I hoofed it.

And then I hoofed it back in the afternoon to pick it up, but quite a bit of cash lighter. At least the car drove smoothly.


Song by: the Cars

2 comments:

A Lewis said...

YEAH for smooth driving cars with new toys on them. Oh, and also for "less husky."

BOO for less cash.

Anonymous said...

Ya didn't give your Parkinson's switched to essential tremor diagnosis to the mechanic??? :)
www.tremoraction.org