Friday, Nov 30, 2007
It was an interesting end to the week.
Friday started out like pretty much any other day, but developed it’s own identity at lunch time. An ex co-worker was back in town and organized a group to go out to TGIFriday’s for lunch. Because lunch started at 12:30p, I missed the first part of my last training class. I left lunch at 1:35p and got to class around 2:00p. Class only lasted another 45 minutes, after I showed up.
Around 3:00p, I started driving back to my Madison office (from the Verona offices, where classes were being held). At the intersection of County Road PD and County Road M, my car stalled out. In the left turn lane. As the engine shut off, the dashboard oil light turned on. At this point, the road was on a slight incline. Fortunately PD isn’t heavily travelled, so I was able to wait one light cycle, then back the car away from the light. This allowed left turning traffic to easily go around me.
The next step was to get the car off of the road. That proved more challenging. I needed to cross a lane of traffic whether I went off to the left or off to the right. The left shoulder was closer, so I wanted to do that. Because the car was on a slight incline, I couldn’t get it moving fast enough on my own to push it across the lane. I made two phone calls. The first was to Christine, asking her to come pick me up and to bring some oil with her. The second was to Mike, asking for his help in pushing the car off of the road.
A note: A surprisingly large number of people pulled up behind, failed to notice that I was 30 feet from the light (with no one in front of me) and that my flashers were on. Having failed to notice these obvious indications that my car wasn’t running, they then proceeded to honk and glare at me.
Fortunately, most people that drove past weren’t jerks. One man initially started to pass me, suddenly slowed, then pulled off to the right side of the road. He came over and helped me push the car over to the left shoulder, in between waves of traffic. To whomever you are: thanks!
Mike pulled up about 2 minutes later and let me warm up in his car until Christine arrived. When Christine arrived, I put a quart of oil in the engine (after checking the level and seeing that it was slightly low). The car still failed to start up.
It was at this point that I first suspected that I’d run out of gas. I had good reason for not suspecting it before: based on average miles per gallon, I thought I had about 20 miles left before I ran out. Also, the gas light completely failed to come, both when I was driving and when I was stopped. I still didn’t really think that I was out of gas, but I figured it was worth a shot before calling for a tow.
Christine drove me over to James & Liz’s house (quicker to drive there than to our house and back), where we borrowed a gas can, and filled it up. I poured it into my car (spilling some on myself in the process), then tried to start it again. After a few seconds of cranking, it caught and started up. It ran rough for about 30 seconds, then smoothed out. Well! I guess it needed a fill-up after all!
We drove back to Verona, put a full tank’s worth of gas in the car, and returned the gas can. I finally arrived home around 6:00p; with cold, numb hands; and clothes that smelled like gasoline. As if that wasn’t enough, my iPod decided to call it a life and committed suicide.
The rest of the day was boring and anti-climatic by comparison.