I wrote a while back that my car broke down while I was driving to Yosemite National Park with a friend of mine. We had just gone to the Mariposa Grove and were heading out of Wowona when the tranny blew out. I got a ride back to a relative’s house in the foothills and later we called a tow truck and two relatives, a friend and I drove back up into Yosemite to get the car and wait for the tow. The car was then towed to a shop in the foothills. Then my friend and I were given a ride back to my place in the Valley as now I had no vehicle!
So I have been without a car all month. All I have to say is I am sure glad I do not have a regular job! It would have been Hell trying to get to and from that job every day with no vehicle. So I walked around town a lot with my friend and ate in restaurants for a couple of days. Since then, I have been walking a lot, up to two miles a day. I rather like walking around town. Also it is great for my back. Every now and then someone comes over and gives me a ride to doctor’s appointments, the store, the coffee shop, the bank or wherever.
I didn’t like the jerk who runs the tranny shop so some relatives had it towed again (I have used up all my tows for the year on my Auto Club card – a lot of it by using it to tow my friend’s cars) to a relative’s house. The relative knows a man who loves to work on Ford Tauruses. He also said that Tauruses have two drive gears, Drive 1 and Drive 2. I had no idea about any of this – I figured drive was drive. Well one you are supposed to drive in all the time and the other is just for certain occasions.
The guy wanted $2,300 to fix the car. I somehow managed to scrounge together $1,900 to give to the guy to buy the parts. Now I need to somehow come up with $400 more for the labor.
After talking with relatives, I decided to not buy a used car because you need to spend ~$4,000+ to buy a used one. Otherwise you are just buying someone else’s problems. So I decided to fix my car instead. Prior to this, I had just sunk $400 into fixing a couple of motor mounts that went bad right before the tranny.
Thanks to all of my subscribers/contributors! I got $1,050 from my readers, and that has gone a long way towards helping me with my financial problems!
I cannot tell how you much I appreciate all of you who are buying subscriptions or contributing. It’s great!
