Gabby Car, an Epilogue
Here's a picture of our beloved 2002 Honda Civic, earlier in the day at a rest stop in the middle of Texas. At this point, the car still had about 1,600 miles to go before it slept.
"Say, Clint," you might be saying if you don't know cars very well. "What does it mean when your radiator is dry and allowing your car to overheat a mere six days after a Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico looked over your coolant system, replaced a thermostat, and topped off the coolant?"
It means three things.
One, it means that broken thermostat the Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico replaced probably wasn't really broken. The problem wasn't the thermostat at all. The problem was a cracked radiator. This would have been obvious to the Gallup, New Mexico Pep Boys. They'd have seen it in an instant, and they would have said to themselves, "Hey! This dope's got a cracked radiator, so all he really needs to do is dump a $2 bottle of radiator stop leak in the thing, fill it up with coolant, and keep an eye on it until he gets home. But if we tell the dope that, then we'll have clear souls and 298 fewer dollars, and the dope won't wind up stuck on a highway in San Antonio six days from now. So let's replace a part that's not broken instead!" In short, the Pep Boys scammed us. And while I emphasize that this was the Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico, I am now firmly convinced that scamming people is a company-wide policy.
Two, it means that I'm an idiot, as this is a really obvious thing I should have known six days earlier. Here's my reasoning as it was at the time. The first time we started overheating, it was pushing 3 in the afternoon on a Saturday, and we were about 30 miles from the nearest town, which was Gallup. We'd been to Gallup before, and it struck me as the kind of place that pulls the shutters closed at 6 pm and doesn't open on Sunday. The first thing you want to do when your car starts overheating is check to see if you have coolant, but you want to shut the car off for at least a half-hour before you do this, or else you risk winding up with a bunch of super-heated coolant in your face. Waiting a half-hour would have put us that much closer to missing the window to find anything open in Gallup, which would have been problematic if after waiting I found the radiator full. So I decided the safer option was to go ahead and get to Gallup, thinking that if it was nothing but low coolant, the mechanic would tell me, because mechanics are good and honest people. I don't say all this to excuse being dumb, just to say that there was a logic to my stupidity borne of a strong urge to not get stuck in Gallup. So while I am a little proud of myself for using my skills as a duct tape mechanic to get us off the road in San Antonio and then the rest of the way home, I was still foolish initially, and I admit this openly. Doesn't mean I should have been scammed, but I did let myself get scammed.
Three, this means that the car is, in effect, done. Not done as in "We live in San Antonio now." But done as in, "We've already spent an unreasonable amount of money on a car that just rolled up 294,700 miles, and now all the things are breaking." Simultaneous to the radiator problem (which grew much more pronounced after this, so that it took two jugs of coolant to get home), the permanent oil leak decided to turn into a stream. And though it wasn't obvious, I suspect all the overheating caused some unknown thing deep inside the engine to give way so that our power dropped and our gas consumption climbed. The car was dying. It was time to nurse the engine home, then get ready to put it out of our misery.
I'll post one more picture of this car at the end of the trip, then that's that.
Gabby Car, an Epilogue
Here's a picture of our beloved 2002 Honda Civic, earlier in the day at a rest stop in the middle of Texas. At this point, the car still had about 1,600 miles to go before it slept.
"Say, Clint," you might be saying if you don't know cars very well. "What does it mean when your radiator is dry and allowing your car to overheat a mere six days after a Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico looked over your coolant system, replaced a thermostat, and topped off the coolant?"
It means three things.
One, it means that broken thermostat the Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico replaced probably wasn't really broken. The problem wasn't the thermostat at all. The problem was a cracked radiator. This would have been obvious to the Gallup, New Mexico Pep Boys. They'd have seen it in an instant, and they would have said to themselves, "Hey! This dope's got a cracked radiator, so all he really needs to do is dump a $2 bottle of radiator stop leak in the thing, fill it up with coolant, and keep an eye on it until he gets home. But if we tell the dope that, then we'll have clear souls and 298 fewer dollars, and the dope won't wind up stuck on a highway in San Antonio six days from now. So let's replace a part that's not broken instead!" In short, the Pep Boys scammed us. And while I emphasize that this was the Pep Boys located at 702 North Highway 491 in Gallup, New Mexico, I am now firmly convinced that scamming people is a company-wide policy.
Two, it means that I'm an idiot, as this is a really obvious thing I should have known six days earlier. Here's my reasoning as it was at the time. The first time we started overheating, it was pushing 3 in the afternoon on a Saturday, and we were about 30 miles from the nearest town, which was Gallup. We'd been to Gallup before, and it struck me as the kind of place that pulls the shutters closed at 6 pm and doesn't open on Sunday. The first thing you want to do when your car starts overheating is check to see if you have coolant, but you want to shut the car off for at least a half-hour before you do this, or else you risk winding up with a bunch of super-heated coolant in your face. Waiting a half-hour would have put us that much closer to missing the window to find anything open in Gallup, which would have been problematic if after waiting I found the radiator full. So I decided the safer option was to go ahead and get to Gallup, thinking that if it was nothing but low coolant, the mechanic would tell me, because mechanics are good and honest people. I don't say all this to excuse being dumb, just to say that there was a logic to my stupidity borne of a strong urge to not get stuck in Gallup. So while I am a little proud of myself for using my skills as a duct tape mechanic to get us off the road in San Antonio and then the rest of the way home, I was still foolish initially, and I admit this openly. Doesn't mean I should have been scammed, but I did let myself get scammed.
Three, this means that the car is, in effect, done. Not done as in "We live in San Antonio now." But done as in, "We've already spent an unreasonable amount of money on a car that just rolled up 294,700 miles, and now all the things are breaking." Simultaneous to the radiator problem (which grew much more pronounced after this, so that it took two jugs of coolant to get home), the permanent oil leak decided to turn into a stream. And though it wasn't obvious, I suspect all the overheating caused some unknown thing deep inside the engine to give way so that our power dropped and our gas consumption climbed. The car was dying. It was time to nurse the engine home, then get ready to put it out of our misery.
I'll post one more picture of this car at the end of the trip, then that's that.