In Threes

[da]

"What's funny to me," I said, "is the front doorknob to our house came off in my hand yesterday."

"Well, bad things usually come in threes," said the tow-truck driver.

"I'm hoping that the storm-door latch shattering a week earlier was number one. I really am."

Yup, I got my first tow-truck ride yesterday.

Welcome back to North America, melted_snowball! You've been experiencing the hour from 5:20pm to 4:20pm repeatedly since you left Tokyo 12 hours ago! As a special bonus for taking the da_lj Corolla Chariot back home, now you get to sit on the side of the 401 for an hour, after the muffler bracket decides it's had enough and now's the time to fall off. Whee!

Joining CAA this summer was a good idea. I called and they said they'd send someone ASAP, since the 401 isn't a safe place to be broken down. After a mix-up when the first CAA towtruck arrived just ten minutes after I called, and determined he was looking for another broken down car in roughly the same place (WTF?), it was a relief that the second CAA truck was actually going to stick around and help.

According to him, the only thing we need is the bracket and bolt which hold it on. He tried to wire it up with a coat-hanger, but the connections were difficult, so he had to put the car on a big dolly to tow us from Mississauga home.

And we made it home by 8pm, after d. and I acted like an old married couple when I was giving directions and dan woke up in the back seat and wanted to give slightly different directions. ;)

And the tire place on the corner, which we trust for minor fixes, can replace the bracket and bolt, I hope. I left them a voicemail. "The car that appeared in your lot on the weekend? That's us. Can you fix the muffler bracket? I'll call back early Monday."

--

The front door breaking, which feels anticlimactic now, was Friday's fun. Bleary morning routine: walk downstairs, get newspaper, make breakfast, deal with roverthedog. Fail step 2, open front door successfully: the handle pulled off in my hand, but without taking any of the innards with it. I'm like, "wait, there's a set of tabs sticking straight out inside the lock, which match the 4 slots in the handle, but... that doesn't look so easy to reattach." Blink. Blink. Hey, I need to get to Physio and to work. So I dealt with it in the evening. It turned out to be fixable, without even needing a trip to Home Hardware. And I also sanded down the top of the door, figuring that was the real cause of the failure. Only 8 years we've lived here, now we finally have a front door that doesn't stick.

--

What I'm (hopefully) calling failure number 1, almost two weeks ago now, was coming home to discover the latch for the storm-door had shattered into a pile of little metal shards on the front stoop. I haven't made it to the hardware store to see if a reasonable replacement can be found. Oddly enough, I feel busy otherwise.

I'm not sure what there is to learn here. Entropy happens? Replace stuff before it fails? Always have spares on hand? Have friends with good advice? I like that last one. If the muffler had actually fallen off, I liked the recommendation of one friend, who said "throw it in the trunk and drive on home. It'll be loud, but that's fine." I was tempted to just do that anyway, while we were waiting the hour for the CAA truck, but I'm glad d. convinced me not to, because I expect it would have cost a bunch more to reconnect the muffler.

So yeah. Just another boring weekend Chez nous.

Comments

[kraig.livejournal.com]

"According to him, the only thing we need is the bracket and bolt which hold it on. He tried to wire it up with a coat-hanger, but the connections were difficult, so he had to put the car on a big dolly to tow us from Mississauga home."

My Mustang did the exact same thing. At least it wasn't on the 401 though; I was visiting friends in Halifax, drove the car from the parking lot to their house the day we were leaving (to load in the PCs, it was a LAN party) and heard grunkagrunkascreeeeeee, looked in the rearview and was treated to what would likely have been a shower of sparks had it not been freezing rain at the time.

We fixed it with some CAT5. Hurray for geekiness. I was watching when the mechanic put it up on a lift to fix it good - no comment. I guess he's seen worse.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, perfect- CAT5. Ya done good- when I was thinking about trying to string it up myself, d. said, "and with what?" I said I hadn't figured that out yet. It hadn't occurred to me to use the cable from one of the cigarette-lighter power adapters, but I guess there was that. :)

Yeah, same sound, not one I appreciated coming from our poor car on the 401. I wonder if there were sparks- it wasn't dark yet, but my visual field was fairly over-worked at the time as it was.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

ok, the first tow truck driver arriving and deciding that you can't be the people he is supposed to tow deserves... something. argh!

[esallen.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should start a "fallen muffler club!" ;-) I lost a muffler when I was driving to visit cousin Carol (and meet Dad there)about two years ago. The car became very noisy, and then I started seeing sparks (from the dragging muffler) so I pulled over somewhere just south of Utica. I could see the muffler was almost off, so I tried to yank it totally away. I wasn't quite strong enough, but luckily a truck driver pulled over and kindly yanked it off for me. Sometimes it helps to be a grey-haired woman! I drove to Carol's without a muffler (and then back home again). VERY noisy - but it worked. I WOULD have phoned AAA, but Dad had the cell phone and I couldn't find a working pay phone. Go figure!