Cars

Today we loaded up the car a little after 2PM to go to a Fourth of July cookout and swim. The car would not start. It's only three years old. I found my jumper cables and tried jumping it from the "old man" parked next to her. No dice. Nothing. Just dead. I unloaded the family and did what any true man would do. I called AAA. Actually, Rebekah called AAA. I did, though, hook up the jumper cables. For me to do that is like most men changing an engine.

I was irritated. Tori melted down into a sobbing fit because she wanted to go swimming. Two hours later some guy shows up in a truck big enough to move my house. He gets some little handheld contraption out, hooks it up to my battery, and the car is running within 10 seconds. He brags that his little machine is twice as powerful as the battery I was trying to jump from.

Before the engine quit again, I grabbed the family and we headed to Sam's Club. (Turns out we had bought a battery just 15 months before for this same car at Sam's which was still under warranty). Sams agreed to replace it for free, but we had to wait almost two hours. Of course, as I'm sure Sam Walton chuckled as we purchased stuff at Sam's Club while I got my "fee" battery installed. By the time we got home it was after 7PM. Our day, and our plans, were wasted because a three-year-old car needed its THIRD battery. Something isn't right.

I was going to make this post a full-on rant about how much we've screwed ourselves by our reliance on cars (gas prices, insurance, death to a certain percentage of people, pollution, etc.) . I'm out of steam and I've only shared today's episode. Give me a horse and buggy. Or a moped.