Timmy Gangs a-Gley

This morning I had a pretty good plan, another one of those that never quite pan out.

Yesterday, when I was driving around near the place I'm housesitting, the brake pedal made it all the way to the floor. It got some traction, and between that and the hand brake I was able to drive safely home. No biggee. I think I mentioned before that Timmy has this little brake problem, usually solved with replacing his brake fluid.

By the way, brake fluid is like really weird stuff. Feels weird and stays on your hands funny.
Anyway, so, this morning I was planning on heading back home and dropping off some shit, but Timmy refused to cooperate. Even with the addition of brake fluid, one of his precious bodily fluids, when I got in the car and pumped the brakes, nothing happened.

Well, that's not quite accurate. Pumping the brakes, it's true, did nothing to get them to perform any better (the pedal still descended to the floorboard, without much resistance), but what I failed to see is what was happening.

Which was my depositing about a pint of brake fluid (that earlier mentioned really weird stuff) onto the driveway of the place I'm housesitting.

What to do?

It's one thing, and this, of course, was my first reaction, to hang my head in disgust and pull my hair. That soon passed, and I was left pacing. When I remembered the sage advice ("What would a normal person do in this situation?"), I knew I had to act.

I have AAA membership, which lets me get one free tow a year. I think. What I don't have with me is my AAA membership card, but I did have a copy of my temporary membership. The next thing I needed was a place to tow the car, and here the Internet came in handy.

Battambang Auto Service is quite close by and someone on Yahoo! gave them five out of five stars. That was the only person who had anything to say about them, and I had my suspicions it was Mr. Battambang himself saying that, but it was one more rating than any of the other auto places had.

I called, and they said they could work on the car, but they always say that.

I then called AAA and arranged a tow, and, to my surprise, my AAA membership had not expired. Sure, it will in less than a month, but I was a still a member in good standing, and a handsome and capable AAA tow truck subcontractor soon lumbered up the street and hooked little Timmy up.

Then, off to Battambang Auto Service, which was in one of those auto repair strip malls I sometimes see. There were about a half-dozen tiny shops offering tires, transmission, oil changes, all the usual car stuff, and Battambang Auto Service was in the very rear. It was but a moment's effort to push Timmy back there, and he was soon ready to be hoisted into the air.

Instead of being told to wait outside, I was told to sit in him, and soon I was six feet in the air while the mechanic putzed about somewhere below me. It was pretty soothing up there, but I did, once, have to depress the brake pedal.

Some five minutes later I was lowered, and some three hours later I was home, the proud possessor of a replaced brake line.

One good thing about this auto mall was that I saw a parade of POS cars like mine coming in to visit the various shops. A not unattractive Asian girl, with a lapful of anatomy flashcards, waited to have the window repaired on her 1992 Camry, and we chatted a bit, and I wandered around to look at tires and see how professionals spent their day.

Some girl came in and got an oil change in about five minutes for twenty bucks, and her Honda took about six quarts of the stuff. I was later offered an oil change for the same price, which would have netted Mr. Battambang about twice the profit for my car.

Anyway, he offered me a great deal of needed service, later, when I could afford it, for a special price "just for me." If I can't do things myself, I may take him up on it.

Not a bad experience at all.