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Apr. 6th, 2007 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaOur car won't start.
Michael offered to drive me to work on Thursday, when the weather turned cold. We loaded ourselves into the car, strapped Alex in the carseat, and... nothing. Nothing happened when he turned the key. We hadn't left the lights on, or anything.
What with one thing and another, it wasn't until after work today that we had the opportunity to investigate further. Michael went out to stand by the car with the hood opened, and within a few minutes someone offered him a jump start. A small crowd of neighbors gathered. The first jump start (from an economy sedan) didn't do much, so another neighbor tried with his big beefy SUV. Still no luck. Someone's elderly father (of considerable automotive experience) finally decided that it was probably a solenoid. Everyone was as friendly and sympathetic as could be - I love the way that misfortunes like this bring out a helpful crowd.
The garage we use is closed over Easter weekend. (I wish we'd thought to wonder about that yesterday, when we decided to leave troubleshooting for later. But we would have had a hell of a time orchestrating getting it to the garage today, and we really did think that a jump start would probably take care of it.)
Tomorrow, we're supposed to be going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum facility at Dulles Airport, with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bosssio and her family. We canceled once before because Alex got sick, and we do not want to cancel again. Plus we need to do grocery shopping this weekend. So we decided to rent a car for a couple of days. It's surprisingly not-that-expensive, if you're renting from a location without airport taxes.
Tomorrow morning I'll be taking a cab to the car rental company and driving home to pick up Michael and Alex and bring them to Northern Virginia. Monday morning, Michael will have the car towed to our mechanic and will wait with it until it's fixed. I'll wait with Alex until her nanny shows up, return the rental car, and ask the rental car people to drop me off at the bus stop so I can take the bus to work. Goodness, the logistics of this are going to be fun.
Michael offered to drive me to work on Thursday, when the weather turned cold. We loaded ourselves into the car, strapped Alex in the carseat, and... nothing. Nothing happened when he turned the key. We hadn't left the lights on, or anything.
What with one thing and another, it wasn't until after work today that we had the opportunity to investigate further. Michael went out to stand by the car with the hood opened, and within a few minutes someone offered him a jump start. A small crowd of neighbors gathered. The first jump start (from an economy sedan) didn't do much, so another neighbor tried with his big beefy SUV. Still no luck. Someone's elderly father (of considerable automotive experience) finally decided that it was probably a solenoid. Everyone was as friendly and sympathetic as could be - I love the way that misfortunes like this bring out a helpful crowd.
The garage we use is closed over Easter weekend. (I wish we'd thought to wonder about that yesterday, when we decided to leave troubleshooting for later. But we would have had a hell of a time orchestrating getting it to the garage today, and we really did think that a jump start would probably take care of it.)
Tomorrow, we're supposed to be going to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum facility at Dulles Airport, with
bosssio and her family. We canceled once before because Alex got sick, and we do not want to cancel again. Plus we need to do grocery shopping this weekend. So we decided to rent a car for a couple of days. It's surprisingly not-that-expensive, if you're renting from a location without airport taxes.Tomorrow morning I'll be taking a cab to the car rental company and driving home to pick up Michael and Alex and bring them to Northern Virginia. Monday morning, Michael will have the car towed to our mechanic and will wait with it until it's fixed. I'll wait with Alex until her nanny shows up, return the rental car, and ask the rental car people to drop me off at the bus stop so I can take the bus to work. Goodness, the logistics of this are going to be fun.
