Personal blog post via www.Krissy90220.com

f you follow me on Twitter then you know Sunday was my big move to the Bay Area.  Everything was great…my fiance and I left 15 minutes behind schedule (4:15AM) which isn’t bad for me because I’m always late.  In my mind I thought this is going to be great!  A 7 hour trip with my fiance then I finally get to settle in.  We were suppose to take turns driving but an hour into the trip he fell asleep.  I knew he was tired so it wasn’t a big deal and I knew he wouldn’t be sleep too long.  I was WRONG.  He was up for all but 20 minutes and at this point I had drove half way there.

Half way there I noticed that my engine seemed to be pulling and my RPM was high and I wasn’t going fast.  Out of nowhere it started going into the red and my car was slowing down.  I pulled over…the Man woke up…we saw smoke and he immediately started going off about me getting an oil charge.  Did I mention my car is an ‘08, I have free maintenance, and he was on the damn phone with me two weeks ago while I got my car serviced.  Here we are in the middle on Cali in bum fuckin’ nowhere in Coalinga with my hood up in the emergency lane.

I sat there with a blank look on my face, gave my Blackberry to my fiance and told him “I don’t care just handle it because I don’t know what to do”.  Since I only had the basic AAA membership they would only be able to tow us to the nearest which was a few miles away.  The gas station also had a mechanic shop next door as well as a hotel so I figured great…they can fix it and we’ll be on our way and if it takes a day then we can stay at the hotel.

We ended up at Kevin’s Auto Repair and Tow (25032 West Dorris Avenue, Coalinga, CA‎).  The mechanic (he will later be referred to as the base-head, also known as a meth-head or dope-head) told us it would be a minimum of 1 hour/ $85.00 to find out the issue and that fee would go towards any repair work that has to be done.  This is standard practice…but I should known something was wrong because he couldn’t stop picking the countless open sores that covered his face, neck, hands, and arms to talk to me.  All he did was talk fast, twitch, and PICK….typical base-head shit!  We sat there and watched him “work” on my car.  All he did was wave the flash light over the engine a few times and of course PICK.  Within 5 or 10 minutes he found the problem.  I’m not surprised.  He told us that my throttle positioning system that was dead and that Nissan has it covered under my warranty but if I wanted it repaired there it would take a day to get the part and “VERY expensive” to fix.  When I asked him how much he said about $700.00.  Of course he wasn’t going to try to take anymore of my money and come up with a real solution.  I paid the $85.00 knowing if his half-ass “diagnoses” was wrong I could file a claim with Visa.  Now the bigger issue was getting the car towed to the nearest Nissan dealership.

FML!  We’re in the middle of nowhere…Nissan was 66 miles away in Fresno…in other words $10 a mile…$600!  The tow truck driver which I’ll later call Our Guardian Angel (sorry I can’t give his name or the company he works for for obvious reasons) hinted that I find a friend with a certain type of membership and get the card information and that way I won’t have to pay out of pocket for the tow.  The plan worked and we were on our way to Fresno.  I’m laughing as I write this because I also wonder how new cars end up on a flatbed tow truck…I see how now.  We took the car to the Nissan dealership which was closed (that I knew already because it was Sunday) and the tow truck driver was even nice enough to take us to a local motel…the luxurious Knight’s Inn.  Well it looked a little iffy because the small pool was gross (just like on the movie Next Friday).  I mistakenly asked the manager “what are your hourly rates”.  I don’t even go to places like that anymore.  We all got a good laugh out of that and he said “oh no we are not that type of place”.  He gave us the “Manager’s Special Room Rate” because he saw the tow truck and said I made him laugh.  He even gave us the security code to their personal wi-fi connection.  We walked into the room….it was small and you can smell cigarette smoke.  I knew this would be a long day (not night because keep in mind it was still early).  We mad a ton of phone calls and got caught up on work using the laptop and ordered Chinese food.  I was still pissed off, stressed out, and sad about the entire ordeal.  Every 10 minutes I’d tell my fiance I want to go home (not back to Compton but our home).  He never got sick of me complaining and kept a smile on my face the entire time.  The television sucked and all the only thing on was Tyler Perry movies.  Before it got too dark we walked over to the dealership to check on the car and took a trip to Target.  Even stressed out I wanted a couple bottles of nail polish but the man refused.

We got up bright and early to head over to the Nissan dealership.  I was surprised that my allergies didn’t act up from being in the motel room.  I guess they keep it a lot cleaner than I think because I didn’t get a stuffy nose and headache.  Hours went by at the Nissan dealership and they still couldn’t figure out the issue since my check engine light never came on.  Since my fiance needed to go pick up the boys he got a rental car and went home.  An hour later my service adviser Brandon called me to his station to tell me what they found out.  My transmission AND radiator went out.  On a new car??!!  Without warning and for no reason.  I was shocked.  My car is still under warranty but I still couldn’t believe this.  He said it would take a couple days to repair and they would cover the cost of the rental car so I could go home (3 hours away).  I took everything out of my car and packed it in the rental car and headed home.

Since it was too late to go yesterday evening I went pickup my car today.  That’s right…3 hours there and 3 hours back.  I even stopped at Fresh & Easy to get my fiance the lemonade he fiends for since we don’t have to close to the house (well we do but it’s across the bridge…blah blah blah).  On the way home I got a massive headache and was beyond relieved that this ordeal was finally coming to an end.

Note:  Moral of the story is:  Invest in a warranty on your car, don’t trust a base-head, just because a motel looks a little iffy it could still be really clean, and a good man will put a smile on your face even in the worst possible situations.  Oh and the bank is handling my $85 charge and my insurance company covers the fee as well.