I bought some new shoes this weekend, they cost me about $230 dollars… but unfortunately, they weren’t for me. They were for my red VW Jetta, Roscoe (yes, yes I’m a dork and I named my car).
Friday evening, I was driving back from the beach with three of my girlfriends in the car and we were stuck in awful bumper to bumper traffic on Sunset. All of a sudden, the man in the car in the next lane yells over to us, “Hey! You need to get those tires replaced immediately, they are balding and are about to burst. If you drive on the freeway they will pop, you should stop driving as soon as possible and get them changed.” In my mind, all I heard were the words “burst” and “pop” and those aren’t words I like to be associated with the vehicle I’m currently driving. So seeing as though we were about an hour away from getting home, I had a minor freak out. Oh my god, the car is going to explode and I’m not going to know what to do… I’m just going to be driving along and Roscoe will burst in to flames. (Ok so maybe the freak out wasn’t exactly minor…)
Aside from the panic attack, we got the car home safely, all tires intact, and I went and got them changed first thing Saturday morning. All was well, and I was no longer cruising around in a death trap, crisis avoided… or so I thought.
There I am, driving back from the tire place with my friend when I hear this awful rattling noise. At first, we assumed it was the bus driving next to us, because buses make loud obnoxious noises… but once we were alone at a stop sign, I realized that the horrible sounding engine was not the bus’, it was Roscoe’s. It sounded like a tractor engine (if you aren’t familiar with tractor noises, think lawnmower on steroids)… which, unless you are driving an 18-wheeler, is not the sound you want your car to be making. And then the lights came on: check engine, coolant, oil, all beeping and flashing while the engine rattled loudly for the 3 minutes it took me to get home.
My car is at the shop now; they think it’s the water pump, which sounds about right since that is one of the few parts I have yet to replace. Roscoe is seven years old, but in those seven years he has had a lot of repairs: new radiator, new alternator, new clutch (that wasn’t really my fault—long story, but really it wasn’t my fault), and there have been a few electrical problems, too. I got him when I was a senior in high school and despite my parents’ suggestion of picking a more reliable car, I wanted a cute, fun car and Roscoe was definitely that. But then my parents stopped paying for the repairs, and he just isn’t so cute anymore.
So it looks like my time with Roscoe is up and of course it happens right after I get him all dressed up in his new shoes… and I can’t even drive him around to show him off. But I learned my lesson, and you can bet I will buy my next car for its reliability, not because it looks good in a high school parking lot.
