Last night I got to use the emergency gear I always carry around behind the seat in my truck. After this very difficult week, I was off to pick up Scott to go to the movies, and suddenly the truck was making some seriously bad missing noises and lost most of its oomph. I was headed uphill, so I pulled over at a street at the top, and tried to listen to it, but it killed itself. I waited, turned it back on, and it sounded okay, so I nosed out to the road and headed down the other side of the hill. Everything was marginal but okay until I was going uphill again and then I could hear and feel that I'd better pull over ASAP.
The thing is, with all the snow, there is no shoulder to the road anymore. I managed to crawl into the entry to someone's driveway, but I wasn't more than three feet off the roadway, and cars and trucks were slamming by so fast that the truck shook every time a vehicle went by. I turned on the flashers (actually, I'd done that as I found I'd lost power) and raised the hood to check the oil. I figured that if it still had oil, there might be hope that it wasn't a totally FUBAR engine.
It did have oil, and that was about as far as I could go with it, so out with the cell phone to call Scott for reinforcements. I could tell by my exploratory visit under the hood, that the temperature had dropped considerably. I found out later that it was -35 degrees.
As soon as I got back into the truck I took off the boots I had on and put on the bunny boots, took off the jacket I'd worn and put on my new/old down parka. If I'd needed to walk anywhere I would have put my snow pants on over my padded Carhartts, and I would have replaced my fleece gloves with the industrial mittens. However Scott said he'd be there as soon as he could, so I just sat tight in the truck and prayed no Saturday night idiot would have a few beers and then slam into the back of my truck. Waiting outside was out of the question. Even though there was no heat in the truck, it was still relatively warm compared to outside. I sat on my hands to warm them up and waited.
The rest of the story is boring, Scott towed it to a safer place just down the road, and I'll have it towed to the mechanic this morning.
How to pay for this, if it is indeed fixable, is the question. It might just be a timing belt, which was overdue to be replaced, and in the recent low temps would have been ready to go. If so, I hope I didn't do horrible damage by that quick little run downhill. If it's the engine, well, I'm screwed.
Let me just say that at this time it's a good time to start taking music lessons with me! And that I have lots of flags, music books, Celtic jewelry, T-shirts, two wedding dresses, plaid skirts, women's kilts and other things for sale! Or you could just mail me a bag of money. That would be great. That would be the best.
Oh, and it's still way down in the negative thirties here. However at least the northern lights are out in force! Do you think there's a pot of gold at the end of the northern lights?
We did end up going to a movie, despite the truck self-destruction. We saw "Life Aquatic" and enjoyed it a lot.
