Sad that I just posted about my fixed car and now I’m talking about it being broken!

Yesterday I decided to take my little sister down to Philadelphia for the day and to meet some of my friends. Another friend of mine is in town visiting, so the plan was to swing by and pick him up, then meet Nita and her sister Dannette down there. What actually happened? I am getting on the turnpike, roll my window down to grab the ticket and hear a “clunk” – oh no. My window refuses to go up. So I’m heading down the turnpike with my window open, panicking about what I’m going to do. I arrive where my friend is staying, explain the situation and he lets me put the car in the garage and drives us down to the city instead. It was nice of him.

I tried to put car worries behind me and we met up with Nita and Dannette at Penn’s Landing. Walked around the Landing and watched some kind of tugboat war for a few minutes before heading up to South Street. The novelty of having an “Annette” and a “Dannette” was not lost, especially when they are both nicknamed “Nettie” and would both look when said nickname was spoken.

South Street was fun, first we hit Jim’s Steaks to treat Annette to a Philly cheese steak (Pat’s and Geno’s were a bit far). I’d never been there, and finally gathered up the courage to get a cheesesteak with cheese whiz on it – and it was fine! I’m no fan of cheese whiz, but maybe there is something to these crazy traditional Philly steaks wit whiz.

The rest of the afternoon was more wandering through shops, then we wandered through society hill and back to the cars. At the garage we decided to head up to Oaks to see Wolverine! We arrived a bit early for the movie, so skipped over to Max & Ermas for some drinks and cookies.

The movie was fun and we left the theater around 10 and it was starting to rain. I still didn’t have my car back, and driving home in the rain with my window down wasn’t an awesome option, so we were dropped off at the apartment and made arrangements for me to pick it up this morning.

I picked it up this morning and fretted the entire way home over how to handle the window situation. I went with getting some pliers to pull up the window to see if I could get it on the track, if that didn’t work I’d use some online instructions to try and take the door apart to see if I can fix the inside myself. That fails? Go to the mechanic! My mechanic didn’t work today, so I was hoping I could at least get the window *up* so I planned to get some masking tape to hold it in place if all else failed.

So I pull into the Walmart parking lot and some smoke/steam starts coming out of the front of my car. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Look at the dashboard, the heat indicator says the engine is running hotter than normal, more smoke coming out, indicator for heat is visibly rising, my sister exclaims “that smells like coolant!”. I pull into a spot and pop open the hood – sure enough a hose has cracked and is spraying coolant all over my engine.

I almost cried.

But instead of crying I formulated a plan to fix Blinker enough to take her home! We hit the Walmart, snagged the planned pliers and masking tape, but added electrical tape, coolant, towel and duct tape to the list. Supplies acquired, we headed back to the car and wiped off the hose with a towel and wrapped the crack in electrical tape (I didn’t know what else probably wouldn’t melt… computer geek here!) and poured half a bottle of coolant into the tank. The 3 mile drive home was fine, while the tape held it visibly brought the engine temperature down. Upon getting back it was obvious that the tape wouldn’t have held for much longer, it had already started to leak.

Wow, so I still have a window to deal with! I move forward with my pliers plan, first trying with just pliers – but they kept slipping and I was worried I’d damage the window. Pliers wrapped in towel? Towel is too thick, couldn’t get a proper grip. Frustrated I started taking apart the door, but then became concerned when I reread the directions that called for a “door panel clip prying tool” which seemed to be important to not doing permanent damage to the clips holding the door panel on. I nearly threw up my hands at that point when I remembered the duct tape. I wrapped the pliers in duct tape and within 3 minutes had pulled up my window – hurrah! Unfortunately I couldn’t get it back on the track, and while trying I heard something *fall* inside the door – broken track clips? Sigh. At least I had the window up, so I secured it in place with my handy blue masking tape (as recommended here). Not exactly classy, but it’ll keep the rain out for now.

Great, fixed window but I can’t actually USE my car! I need my car to work by Wednesday morning so I can bring my sister to the airport! I am going to call my mechanic in the morning and see what he can do for me. I’m hoping he can do a quick fix job on the cracked hose (I’ll even provide replacement coolant, I bought enough!) and possibly take a peek at the window – even if I can’t afford to or he doesn’t have the parts to fix it properly maybe just prop it up so I can get rid of the masking tape. Cars!

I’m glad my sister is here, she’s keeping me sane through these car troubles and it’s great to have her in town in general. Today any potential plans were ruined by car issues, but we’ve had a fine time just chilling out with computers, tv, and a 2 mile walk down and back from the local Wawa for some soda and snacks. I missed family, I’m wondering if I should start making a more dedicated effort to stay in better contact and see them more often.