Sunday

So, because of the weddings, my sister came into town. She was invited to the ceremony that I didn’t go to. But, with her in town, our entire family was together for the first time in a long time. My mom cried. It was great. We got a big Chicago-style pizza and watched some old home movies from 1993. Things were great. At about 5:30pm I packed all my things back in my car for my three hour trip south. (A three hour trip. A three hour trip.) As I turned onto the highway I noticed problems with my power steering. Great. Just great.
I turned off at the next exit to take a look at my car. I figured the “check engine” light shouldn’t be on. Sure enough, one of the belts had come off. After further inspection, it was the serpentine belt. The same damn belt that came off when I was heading up north to my friend’s wedding in October. (See the back-logs in the month of October for that award winning story!)
So after about a half hour of messing with it with my dad in my folk’s driveway, we decided to call it quits. It is a good thing that I pack for an extra day, because now I needed it. With nothing going on Sunday night and no car to take me anywhere anyway, I sat at home and watched boring TV waiting to be tired enough to go to sleep.
The next morning started off a little earlier than I would have liked. At about 8am I went to one of the few mechanics I trust (J&C Auto on Ogden. I highly recommend them. They don’t screw you over.) They let me know that the tensioner was off center and rubbing against the belt. That is why it was frayed and fell off. They told me that it would be roughly $300 to fix everything. I asked how much to just put a new belt on. $87 was their answer. I had them do the second option, because I have dumped enough money into that car.
They let me know that I would get a few months of use out of the car before I had the same problem again and I told them that was all I needed. I figured I would get off my ass, fax in the paperwork from my accident in December (see the back-logs for that story too) and get some extra money for a down payment on my next car. Meanwhile, I would use this one EXTREAMLY sparingly.
So, I made it to work that morning only about an hour and a half to two hours late, but very pissed. I think I will also contact the repair place that originally helped me out in October to see if I can get them to fix things for free. But, in any event, I have gone about a total of 120 miles in the past few weeks to make sure that I can get my car to last as long as I can. Needless to say, the days of the beautiful 1993 Chrysler Le Baron that you have all come to know and love are now numbered.