Nothing quite caps off a week like having your car puke out while driving down a busy road during rush hour. Yup, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday evening as I was heading home from running errands.

Now something that you have to keep in mind is that I know nothing about cars. So I was left with very few options short of calling my younger brother who is in a better position to handle this sort of thing from a skill perspective. Well, he came out and looked at it and after fooling with it a bit, the decision was made to go ahead and have it towed home to my house. After all, we figured that the problem was going to be something relatively minor and would not amount to anything really expensive.

Today, Nate and I went to take another look at the car hoping the problem would be easy to resolve now that we had some light to work with. He was able to determine that it was electrical and thought that it could have something to do with the coil. So off to NAPA we went! After we returned from our car part quest, we opened the hood back up to plug this puppy in to see if that would resolve anything. No go. Still got no spark. Keep in mind there was no backfiring or anything to indicate that there was a misfiring of any sort. After much frustration, I finally broke down and called a recommended mechanic. As it turns out, it is going to cost me $75 an hour to get my beloved car back on the road. This may not seem like a lot to you, but when you are looking at an electrical problem plus any needed parts, the idea of $75 an hour can quickly become a scary prospect

The good news? I figure that this could have been a lot worse. While this is still going to cost a small fortune, I am thankful that it did not throw a rod or something really extreme like that. On the downside, this means that I am without a car till this is resolved and I have to borrow transportation for the next few days. Since we have Linuxfest coming up on Saturday, it looks like I will be borrowing a car from the parents so that I will not have to resort to public transportation.

Cars can be a blessing. Other times, they can also prove to be a major headache and expense. This week has thoughtfully reminded me just how much of an expense a car can be under these trying circumstances.

Let’s get digital!