Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Amber vs. Ditch: The First Time I Got Towed

Another lunchtime post. This one will be less philosophical than last time. My brain can only handle so much deep thinking before I get overwhelmed.
As most of my friends are aware, I work an office job for a family-owned business. This business's office is located on the family's property, in a building 1/4 mile from the house and the only available restroom. (I quickly learned it was a bad idea to have milk or smoothies for breakfast.) During the summer this distance works to my advantage because I get a 1/2 mile run in on my break. With the arrival of winter, however, I've started driving to the house instead of risking the cold and ice.
The driveway is paved, but thanks to 12-odd feet of wetland in the way it was not built in a straight line. There are three significant curves in that 1/4 mile, with the one closest to the office being the worst. 
Some of you can see where I'm going with this.
Per usual, I took my car. Coming back I hit the last turn too tightly and slid right off the edge of the drive. I didn't even have a chance to try and correct before I was sunk.
Commence 5 minutes of trying to rock the car. This only got me in deeper. I jogged the few hundred feet to the office and grabbed some cardboard to stick under the front tires. This didn't work. So I called my boss. "Hey. I'm stuck in the ditch off the drive."
She said she'd be up with her truck as soon as she finished her work.
Did I sit around to wait? No. I thought I'd give it one last try on my own. Make things a little easier for the truck, you know? After all, I'm a Royce: I can fix anything with enough sheer determination.
Many of you have seen that my driver's door is something of a mess from my wreck last March. Before that unfortunate left turn, the door handle took some work to open. Now it takes lots of leverage and jiggling, especially in the winter, to work at all. A lot of the time I'm climbing over the passenger seat to get in.
I had gone into the ditch passenger side-first. Gravity pulled my driver's door down and I couldn't work it open from that angle, so I climbed through the passenger side. I tried once to rock the car and gave up. And climbed through the driver's door. And didn't check the locks.
I kicked at some snow around the tires and decided I should quit while I was ahead. But when I went to open the door to turn off the car, I discovered it was locked. Ok, fine. Wait. Not fine.
Peering through the window, I realized the passenger door was locked. In my frustration I probably tripped around the snow and tree roots to test it.
Yup. All locked except the one door I couldn't muscle open.
I debated for a good 3 minutes before I called Mom.
"My car got stuck in the ditch at work and I can't get the door open. It's still running."
And then I lost it. I'd been laughing at that point, but you all know what happens as soon as you call Mom: the lost, helpless child in you comes out.
Thankfully I didn't collapse in hysterics in the snow, but I did cry.
Mom said she'd be up in a while with the key. I went back in to try to force down some of the lunch for which I now had no appetite.
Before Mom arrived, my boss came up with her truck. I had left her a message saying to hold off until Mom came and we could get into the car, but she hadn't got it.
To condense, Mom arrived, got the driver's door open before she even tried unlocking and climbing through the passenger door, and we tried pulling out the car. My rear bumper (y'know, the one held together with blue tape?) creaked and groaned, but no good that way. It didn't even budge when we tried pulling it forward, and the truck just spun its wheels.
So we called a tow truck.
It would have been one thing if I had actually been on the road and skidded on ice or something. But at work? One a driveway I drive every day of the week? That's kind of a blow to my pride.
The tow truck arrived a couple hours later. Oh, yeah. When Mom came, she turned off my car for a minute, but upon trying to restart it to get out of the ditch we discovered that it wouldn't start. So Mom told me to test it before the tow truck driver left.
I pointed the man to my car and mentioned it hadn't started last time. He told me to get in and try it before anything else so he could hear it.
The car started up on the first turn of the key.
I wanted to kick that impudent Chevy.
Raising an eyebrow, the man asked if I could manage to steer it as he directed. So he hooked up the winch, waved his hand to indicate the desired direction of the tires, and - with my boss's boys staring as they walked up from school - my car was pulled free.
The man had quoted $50-55 for the tow. When I told him I had a card or $49 in cash, he said the cash was fine, bid me a good day, and left.
I thought it was over there.
Famous last words.
Our driveway at home is prone to snow drifts. I know this because I've nearly got stuck in them several times this winter turning my car around to park it. Sunday night, the drift got the better of me.
Allenna said tight-lipped in the passenger seat as I tried to rock the car. Finally, shaking my head, I told her she might as well go in side. Heather, who had come home first, came out to see what the deal was. Knowing my recent track record with snow-stuck cars, she helped herself to the driver's seat and tried her hand at getting my car out. No such luck.
Then she turned it off while we debated what to do.
My car hasn't turned back on since.
We tried jumping it, but no good. It's probably a starter or something. And since I was half-way through turning it around when it got stuck and then quit, parking around the Royce house has gotten kind of creative. I used Heather's car yesterday because she had off, but now I'm stuck with the van until my Chevy dilemma is resolved.
So that's my life. People ask me what's new, and I shrug and say not much. I'm thinking either people need to stop prodding me for details or I need to come up with something else to say. "I'm writing a book" or "I'm getting a lot of reading in" or "I tried this new flavor of hummus". Anything except, "Nothing. My life is boring and uneventful and not worth discussing." Because then that isn't true.

No comments:

Post a Comment