Friday was a quiet morning. I'm currently still programming from home and all my current customers were ticking along nicely, no-body had any work that needed doing so I decided to sneak out for a long lunch and watch a movie at my local cinema. I'd already seen the good movies like "Cloverfield", so I decided to watch "Untraceable" largely because a) it has Diane Lane in it and b) it was set in our old home town Portland, Oregon!
So I leave the house about 11.30 for the 11.45 showing. My gas gauge was on empty and I didn't really have any time to hit the gas station. How bad can it be I thought, the cinema is 10 blocks away (although Phoenix blocks are much, much bigger then Portland blocks). So I get to the cinema, park up and go watch the movie. I spend the next 90 mins alternating between "Ah Portland, it's so pretty" and "Has there been 1 scene in this movie where it hasn't been raining?!?". Unfortunately despite an interesting premise the movie quickly collapsed into cliche and all-round lame-ness - for shame Hollywood, for shame! They did at least seem to get their locations right, and used lot's of local Portland terms, so I'm assuming it was at least written by someone familiar with the city?
So 1.30pm, I'm back in the truck and about to head for home. I pull out of the parking lot and onto the little mall exit road, where my car promptly dies. Shit! I sit there for a couple of minutes with my hazards blinking away, trying to start the car again while other idiot drivers pull up right behind me, somehow not noticing that my truck is blinking more than the UFO's in "Close Encounters"! Luckily for me, across the street the Chase bank has a security guy in the parking lot and he walks over and offers to help push the car into their parking lot, which we do.
So I chat to Larry the security guy for a few minutes. I'm pretty sure I'm out of gas so I just need to walk to the nearest gas station and get some. Larry offers me the use of a gas can, but isn't allowed to leave his post to drive me. So I set of walking to the nearest gas station which is about 5 blocks away... but being Phoenix with their giant blocks, this is like a 30 minute round trip in the mid-day sun so it's hot and I'm getting thirsty. I finally make it back, pour the gas into the tank, try & start the car - nothing. Still dead. Bugger. It's now getting on for 2.30pm so I call AAA, tell them I'm out of gas and they tell me they'll have a couple of gallons right out to me. About 3.30pm someone finally shows up, we put the 2 gallons in the tank, try and start the truck and it still wont go. So my AAA guy calls for a tow-truck, hands me a bottle of water (the only sustenance I've had all day so far) and leaves. I chat to Larry some more. Larry hasn't eaten for 3 weeks. He saw the children in Africa starving on TV and asked how can he go back for seconds or thirds all the time when they have nothing? So he's on a fast. It's been 3 weeks. I figure his hearts in the right place, even if this is a somewhat extreme reaction. Maybe eating half your normal food, and donating the rest to oxfam would be a healthier solution?
About 5pm AAA call to check the address - the first guy had given them the wrong address and now that tow-truck had gone to another job and they had to find someone else to send to me. Larry goes home, it gets dark. Chase employees are leaving and probably wondering why I'm sat in their parking lot. About 6pm Sally shows up with some drink and snacks - bless her, perfect timing as I was starving by this time. And about 6.30pm the new tow-truck shows up and finally tows me the 10 blocks to the nearest Ford dealer... which is closed. Chatting to the young tow-truck guy I discover that he briefly lived in Utah. We went to Moab, UT recently and it was beautiful so I wondered why he left Utah to move to Phoenix? "The only thing to do there is go to Walmart!" he replies. I laugh uncontrollably for the next 5 minutes straight :-)
So we abandon the car on Ford's lot, throw the key in an envelope and are done with it, 5 hours of my life wasted. Then it's off to the nearest Chili's for food and drink, and lots of swearing to sell the car and buy a moped!
Saturday lunchtime I get a call from Ford telling me that my truck is fixed and the culprit was... faulty inertia switch! Long-time readers of the blog might remember that on our journey from Portland to Phoenix my truck died in the middle of nowhere, CA? Same issue. Let's hope this new inertia switch works better then the last one. At least I still ended up being under factory warranty, so the repair work was all free - yay. Finally I have a truck I can use again, and it only took 5 hours of my life wasted.
