You know those times then all sorts of things go wrong at once, and it all seems to be falling apart? You know what's nice? When all those things turn out to not be anywhere near as bad as you were afraid they were!
Like just about everywhere in Western Canada, we've gone from an incredibly mild winter to a sudden deep freeze. It's a bit of a shock to go from temperatures as high as +8C during the day, with no wind chill, to -25C with windchills bringing it down to -40C or so. Nasty stuff!
A few days back, after some delays, I finally got to doing our major shopping. We usually do a big grocery shopping trip every other Friday, buying things in bulk to last us a while, then only needing to do small trips during the week for things like milk and such. Now that I teach crochet classes on Fridays, I don't have the time to do the major errands, so it gets pushed aside for a few days. This time, that meant doing the shopping on Sunday. The temperatures had already started to drop by then, but not severely, yet.
First, a trip to Costco to get the big stuff. We took our time about it, and I'm glad we did, as we found a really nice folding chair for Eldest to use the next time she's selling her paintings in her booth. We'd been using folding camp chairs. They're a bit low and have seats that are slightly rounded, so getting in and out of them when a potential customer walks in is rather ungainly. This chair, unfolded, looks like a regular dining room chair, so it'll be perfect.
After getting all the stuff we use Costco for, we had to stop at a different grocery store on the way home to get the stuff we need that Costco either doesn't carry, or aren't worth getting there. Sometimes, their bulk quantities are just a bit too much!
That done, we head home with a very full van. Rather then park in our spot and make numerous trips carrying ungainly things across the street, I usually pull in near our front steps, which has me facing the wrong way on the side of the street, so we have to be fast about it.. I unload the van to the first landing of the stairs, Eldest takes stuff up the stairs to inside the door and Youngest takes the stuff from her to the kitchen. I then quickly park the van in our spot and, if there's still stuff left outside, help Eldest haul the last of it in. Usually, it's all in by the time I'm parked.
Now, we did have a cold spell before this winter. Just a few days of extremely cold temperatures that had us bringing the stray cat and her kitten on our balcony indoors, even though we're not allowed to have more then 2 pets. They wouldn't have survived those temperatures. This means that we also set up the extension cord for our block heater and battery warmer. We plugged the van in for all of two nights, I think, but left the cord out, wrapped around the driver's side mirror. So it's not like plugging in would have been inconvenient. I just wasn't in the habit of doing it yet.
Perhaps you already see where this is going.
Sure enough, I didn't think to plug the van in after parking it.
That night, temperatures plummeted.
Dh has been having a lot of troubles with his back since before Christmas. Totally laid him out with massive amounts of pain. Things have improved, but I have been driving him to work in the mornings. He used to usually walk in, which he can't do right now, and even taking the bus would be very unpleasant. More so in the mornings then the afternoon, so he's good to take the bus home now and again, but it's still not a good thing.
Monday morning, I go to start the van to drive him to work. I chastised myself for forgetting to plug in the van, but we've had it unplugged last winter in similarly cold weather, so I wasn't too worried. In I go and turn the key. The engine started to turn over and
RATTLECLACKCLACKCLACK!!!
I immediately turn the ignition off again. What the heck was that? I try again. The engine starts to turn over and...
RATTLECLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK!!!
I stop trying to start the van, concerned that my attempts to start it were causing more damage. Back in I go (after plugging the van in, belatedly) and tell Dh what's happened. This leaves him in a rush to get to the bus stop to get to work.
After looking at the forecast and seeing that temperatures were only going to drop further, I ended up cancelling Youngest's guitar lesson. I had originally thought to drive her to her lesson and just drop her off, but that was obviously not an option anymore. We usually walk it, but with the temperatures as low as they were, even a 15 minute walk is rather dangerous.
Some time later, after giving the block heater and battery warmer some time to do their thing, I did try the van again, and the same thing happened. It was thoroughly dead.
But what happened?
We've had some very bad experiences when it comes to vehicles and breakdowns. The most severe was when we rented a car in Victoria, BC, to drive to Manitoba and surprise our family for Christmas. We stopped in Saskatoon, SK for the night, on a night when temperatures hit -61C with the wind chill. Long story short, the engine block cracked. Other adventures include dropping a valve and damage caused by what turned out to be unethical garage mechanics who "repaired" our vehicle, but drained it of fluids.
As you can imagine, I was expecting the worst. From the noise, my thoughts were that the starter was blown. Unfortunately, we didn't have the money in budget to take the vehicle into the garage. Sure, damage would most likely be covered by the insurance we'd bought, but even then the insurance doesn't cover everything, and I wasn't going to send the van in if we didn't have the funds to cover anything unexpected like that.
The next day, the van was still quite dead. Unfortunately, busing to and from work in the cold on the Monday wrecked Dh's back again, so he worked from home. Wednesday, he was better so he bused in again.
Talking to the folks at work, someone suggested that it might just be the battery, and that all we needed was a boost. That hadn't occurred to me. The noise had me thinking starter, but there was also power to the dashboard lights and such. We've had batteries die on us before, and when they did, nothing worked at all. I decided to call our roadside assistance to have a tow truck come and give us a boost. This roadside assistance was one of the selling features when we got the van, so I didn't think there would be an issue. As far as I knew, we were covered for the length of our contract, which is 5 years.
Of course, things are never so simple.
It turns out that our van's roadside assistance was still under the name of the previous owners - a company - and it expired in June. So I talked to the dealership and had it changed to our name. I called the roadside assistance back and...
It's still considered expired. It seems we didn't actually get the roadside assistance we thought we did, because someone else had already bought it and it was still good for another 2 1/2 years, which no one told us about, so we had no idea about any sort of expiry. Nothing in our paperwork said anything about it, other than listing the toll free number we were supposed to call if we needed roadside assistance.
Back to talking to the dealership.
After much time on the phone, I finally got to someone who could help me figure out it. After explaining to me that we had only been covered by the previous owners buying a 5 year roadside assistance plan, which was now expired, and me being quite unhappy, I hear an exclamation from the woman I was speaking to. Looking through our file, she found that yes, we were covered, but not through the roadside assistance program. You know, the one with the toll free number on our paperwork, telling us to call it if we needed assistance. Also the number on the free keychain they gave us, while touting roadside assistance as a selling feature. No, that's not where we were covered. You see, when we bought the van, we paid a bit extra for "new vehicle" coverage, as well as the highest version of repair insurance they had available. It turns out that this insurance company is also the company that provides us with roadside assistance. The only place that toll free number was available was inside a pamphlet that I had to hunt for. She also gave me the certificate number I would need when I called them - a number that was no where in our paperwork.
*sigh*
By the time all this was figured out, several hours had passed. Meanwhile, I was on the computer, so I could check my news or whatever while on hold.
Part way through one of my calls, I lost my internet connection.
So while I was on the phone, I was also trying to repair my internet connection, which included restarting the modem, restarting the computer, and all the standard stuff to run through when such things happen.
No go.
My cell phone was still working, though (our cell phones are with the same company that provides our home internet), so I texted Dh and asked him if he could call our provider and find out if there were problems at their end, since I was still on the phone and couldn't call myself.
Eventually, he found out that our provider was having an area outage, so it wasn't just us, and likely due to the temperatures. It was a hardware problem, too, so someone would have to physically go to the box for the area and do a repair. They had no way of knowing how long it would take.
Frozen van, frozen internet.
By the time I finished up on the phone with the dealership, it was getting late enough in the day that I didn't want to call the insurance company's roadside assistance number. We could wait until the next day. As for our internet, it stayed down. At this point, I was really glad I upgraded my phone to one with a wi-fi hotspot, because that became our way to go online. I could use my phone or the tablet, but there's only so much you can do with those. Touch screens just can't compare to using a keyboard for things.
I was really glad we got our grocery shopping done when we did, though. If we hadn't, we would have been in a bit of a pickle.
Busing in had done a number of Dh's back again, so he was home from work on Thursday, but with no internet, he couldn't work from home. He called again in the morning and found out they were having multiple failures, and they didn't know why they were happening. I found out later that other providers were having troubles, too. Not good.
Meanwhile, I called the insurance company and arranged to have a tow truck come out and give us a boost, hoping it was just the battery but fearing it was much worse. It took over 2 hours for the truck to come, but I was sure glad to see him. I told him that when he greeted me and asked how I was doing, too. He laughed and told me he was getting a lot of people saying how happy they were to see him lately! And no wonder. This sort of weather means a lot of people are needing to call for assistance, and at times like that, there's nothing more beautiful then the site of a tow truck!
Anyhow, he hooks up the van, we give it a try and...
It starts immediately!!
Yay!!
Talking to the driver, he told me to leave it running for at least 20 minutes. I did. I headed back inside for a bit, but wasn't going to leave the van running and unattended, so I spent most of that time sitting in the van playing solitaire on my phone. *L* I lost track of time and it ended up being more like 30 minutes. I got back inside and went to plug my phone into it's USB cable to charge when I happened to look at the modem and discovered all the right lights were on. Yay!! again! We had internet!
I knew I'd need to take the van for a run, but things needed to be done, so it was a couple of hours before we could head out. Eldest asked to come along, so off we went to the van and...
RATTLECLACKCLACKCLACK!!!!
Oh, no.
Sure enough, I'd waited too long and the van was once again dead. Calling for roadside assistance again wasn't an option, as it's limited to one such call every 24 hours. I went into our co-op's office and asked our administrator if she knew anyone we could get a boost from. I found out that our maintenance guy will do that for members, which I really wish I'd known about the day before. He only works for us 3 days a week, so he wasn't there. She couldn't think of anyone else.
Someone I know on facebook happened to mention that cab drivers will boost cars for a fee, so I ended up calling a cab company and asking about it. Sure enough, for a set fee you pay whether the vehicle starts or not, they will send a cab out to boost vehicles. We arranged for it and off I went to the van to wait. It took less then 10 mintues for the cab to arrive, which is shockingly quick. It started without any problems. This time, I was set up and ready to take it for a drive right away, just waiting long enough for Eldest to join me. While doing my errands, I left the engine on, with Eldest in the van to make sure no one would drive off with it. Then we went on a route march, taking a freeway across the city and back again, just to give the altinator more time to charge the battery.
The van has been working just fine ever since.
And I have been diligently remembering to plug it in, every time! LOL
It sure has been a relief to find the fix was so simple, and I am once again able to drive Dh to and from work. It did make me think about how much we appreciate having it. We went without a car for a couple of years, so it's not like we don't know how to make do without it. It's just that things are so much better with it!
I like my van.
No comments:
Post a Comment