Support your local mechanic....buy Hyundai

Little known fact: both myself and 'wrence (as well as Bones) have at one time or another owned and driven (when road-worthy) vehicles produced in South Korea. Suffice it to say that you get what you pay for when you buy these little buggers.

As my time in school winds down and I begin the whole job-hunt/possible relocation/wedding financing thing, I have found myself white-knuckling it every time I get in my little silver pseudo-testicle of a vehicle. I had a really awesome little string of luck going. No major repairs for about a year and a half...just oil changes and the like. In fact, I was just thinking the other day "Man, this piece of shit is actually holding up pretty well lately." Talk about really Munsoning it.

All that good karma came whip-snapping back at me on Friday night. See, the little bitch had been squeaking for a couple of days. One of those squeaks that gets progressively higher pitched and more frequent and then all of a sudden something "catches" and it stops. I didn't think much of it, just the cold...maybe a loose belt or something. Then, I was driving some students to an overnight program for kids who were thinking about going to law school and all hell broke loose. My dashboard lights started flickering, my headlights started dimming, my radio turned off, my tachometer stopped working. It was like I was in Apollo 13 or something and the shit just started all farting in my face at the same time..."Pusan we have a problem."

Then all of a sudden, the squeak happened, something caught and it lit up again...like Marty McFly all of a sudden standing up straight and strumming along to Earth Angel. Long story short, I was leaving this place in Dover, Mass and after four tries at jump starting I finally got it going, it just died on me at the first red light I came to. So I called AAA and joined up, which they actually let you do, and they came out an hour and a half later not with a tow truck but with jumper cables...apparently they didn't really understand my predicament. So they jumped me and less than 3 miles later it happened again in the middle of Rte 16 in Wellesley....and I couldn't push my car out of the way so I was just sitting there stopping traffic...talk about flagrant douchebaggery on my part.

At the end of it all, I had spent 3 hours waiting for roadside assistance and $500 on a new alternator and some belts. I just hope this little pain in the ass doesn't decide to fuck with me anymore before I graduate.

&Ry