Good grief.

This morning, I headed into town fairly early to pay for the repairs on the truck, and take the keys. I talked to the owner for a bit and told him the background on when this happened before, and the C clip fix that I’d meant to ask him to check before but kept forgetting.

He told me that, with Chevy/GM vehicles, this is the most common thing he’s seen break down. He’s replaced a thousand of these. They just keep breaking. EXCEPT the after market part. Those hold out just fine.

Then I headed into town to fill the tank on my brother’s car before heading home. I remembered to stop at the post office, and yes, our parcel was there. It didn’t have our box number on it, as some places won’t ship to box numbers. So it had the post office’s address on it. As soon as I came in, the postal worker saw me and got it right out!

After I got home, I had some time to get things ready before going to the funeral. To my surprise, my sister phoned. She asked if I were planning to go, and I said yes. She told me that our vandal had been adamant that he didn’t want me, my brother or my mother there. (You can read why we would want to go, anyway, here), but that his wife had said she would not turn anyone away. I told her, no one has said anything to us directly, I’ve only heard through her, but I assumed as much. She just wanted to make sure I knew, in case there were issues.

There were no issues.

My brother and SIL came out to get my mother. Their son and grandsons where there, so while my brother and mother had one vehicle, the rest went in my nephew’s truck. We had more or less worked out how we would switch vehicles.

After the funeral, we went to the cemetery for the interment. I went along with my brother and mother, leaving the car I borrowed from them, for the moment. My brother parked in such a way that my mother could stay in the car and watch, as she didn’t want to transfer to the wheelchair again. We left when they started handing out shot glasses; our vandal wanted everyone to have a shot of vodka at his graveside. *sigh*

My brother started taking our mother back to the nursing home while the rest of us crammed into my nephew’s truck to go back to where their car was parked. Then I drove my SIL to the garage, with a friend following behind, to switch vehicles.

They waited to make sure the truck started and I was on my way. I remote started it and it sounded fine, but when I got in, there was a warning light, and a message to service the 4 wheel drive.

???!!!

The garage was still open, though, so I quickly told my SIL what was happening, then went in to talk to the owner, who was working on another customer’s vehicle. When he heard what I described, he looked absolutely shocked. Obviously, this wasn’t there when the parked the truck in the lot after servicing it.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to check it today. His diagnostic computer was at his second location. I asked him, so what do I do? He suggested I drive it for a while and see if the light turns off on its own, which sometimes happens. It’s not blinking or anything, right? Nope. Not blinking.

So I tell my SIL and they leave, though she made sure I knew her phone was linked to her car, so I could phone her if necessary.

Then I tried to drive the truck.

As soon as I put it in drive (which felt really stiff with the new part) and as soon as I started moving, the alarm started to ding. There is a large open area I could turn the truck around in, so I did that. While in reverse, the dinging stopped. Once in drive, it started again.

I returned to the parking lot and backed into a spot again, then went in to talk to the owner and tell him what happened.

There was absolutely nothing he could do about it at the time, and I couldn’t drive it home like that. So I called my SIL.

*sigh*

I know they’re really wanting their car back. Their other one, that they’ve loaned me before, it still in the shop.

She had to get to where they were all meeting at a restaurant first, and then said she would come back. In the end, it was my brother that came for me. He called along the way, and it’s a good thing he did. He misheard when she told me where I was. The name of the garage is very similar to the name of the general store in our little hamlet, so he was on his way there! He had just passed the turn off to the industrial park our garage is now located in. He was on hands free and kept me on the line as he turned around and came back, telling me what he was seeing as he drove in. He didn’t have far to go.

When he reached me, I could tell he was very unhappy about the whole situation. I don’t think he quite understood why the owner couldn’t just manually check it. It didn’t occur to me until well after, that he didn’t know the owner was working on another vehicle and couldn’t really stop.

I was apologetic about the whole thing, but really, there’s nothing we could do. We had no other options. I’m just thankful that they could lend it to us at all. They used my brother’s newly acquired electric commuter car to drive my mother and plan to sell their two gas powered vehicles. Both of which needed a lot of work done on them, just to be safetied.

But, we have their car again. We drove back to the restaurant to drop him off, and I took their car home again.

This is getting so ridiculous. I can’t even drive the truck away from getting one repair job done, without something else going wrong!!

I don’t even know how we’re going to pay for it. Thankfully, the bill I paid this morning wasn’t large; about $275.

I did remember to text the owner and suggest he try driving the truck around, as I hadn’t had a chance to describe what I was feeling to him at the time. I barely drove it, and all I can say is that something felt… off.

Thankfully, he knows me will enough by now that when I can only tell him something vague like that, he takes me seriously. He might not always find the problem right away, but eventually, it happens.

I am so tired of this.

The Re-Farmer