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Pushing Uphill | |
Posted Dec 28, 2009 - 8:24:52
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 This last weekend Crysta and I went down to Milwaukee to celebrate Christmas with my family - this you may already know. The actual holiday event was quite fun, if not hectic, as my parent's ended up hosting not one but two family parties between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day -- not to mention the increased population in the house in general from the return of myself, my siblings, and all of our significant others.
This was though all to plan.
Where things start going wrong is Saturday night. On Saturday night Crysta and I got together with Chris to hang out. Everything went great, but eventually we decided to drive home.
This is where the problems began.
My 1996 Ford Escort, not exactly the paragon of automotive prowess, decided about a mile away from my parents house to... well... die. The battery gave up the ghost, lost any semblance of a charge, and my car eventually came to a halt on Wauwatosa Avenue. Fortunately, I was able to coast mostly around a corner and get onto Hillcrest, between the High School and Underwood Baptist Church.
The difficulty here is that this street goes uphill.
It's not as steep as I drew it in the comic, but it felt like it as I tried to push my escort onto the street. It was a no parking area, but it surely beat the middle of the road. At first I tried to move it with Crysta steering, but soon it became clear that with the Zero traction I was getting on the slush covered ground that she would have to help me push. We got the vehicle out of danger, and I then called my parents' house in hopes of help.
And help we got.
It is from this point you should know the heroes of this story are my Father, my brother David, my sister's husband Ken, and my brother's girlfriend Mary. They drove out and helped push the car (quite easily with that level of manpower) to a legal parking spot in front of the church (albeit facing the opposite direction of the street). Ken popped out my battery, and we took it home to charge it -- hoping deeply that the problem would be there and not with my car's alternator. We drove back to my parent's house, and my Dad put the battery on his Car Battery charger overnight.
The next day, after spending some time with Crysta's Father, her brother and her brother's wife, I went back out to my poor, abandoned Ford Escort with my father. We reinserted the battery, and tried to start the car.
It started, but barely.
I drove the car home, and parked it in my parent's garage. I tried to start the car once more, but the battery (which had spent all night on the charger) didn't have enough juice.
This makes me hopeful, as car batteries are cheap. I know this as I had to replace one in my previous vehicle.
My mom, who is a teacher and therefore off from work this week, was kind enough to lend me her car for the week. The heated leather seats of her L-Series Saturn were nice, but I'd rather get my Escort running sooner than later. My dad is going to go out and get a battery this week and pop it in (for which I will gladly pay him back), and I go back to Milwaukee to get the Escort next weekend.
Geh.
On the upside, I now own a Wii. Can't complain about a Christmas where someone gave me a Wii.
- Traegorn
I hope your car lives. But that's also because I have tons of respect for a Ford car.
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