About Cars, My Crappy One in Particular

As the day of the MTA strike rapidly approaches, I thought that it might be prudent to check on my car and make sure that it still has some life left in it.

Those of you who don't know me personally probably aren't entirely aware of my hatred for automobiles. So, I will take a moment to give you a bit of a background. I never bothered to learn about cars, because I figured that they were just the sort of technology that would become obsolete in about 10-15 years. I dismissed cars in the same category as the audio cassette, the typewriter, and the DOS operating system. Thankfully, in New York City, one can get anywhere using only public transportation, and I enjoyed my car-free life tremendously.

This all changed when, after graduation, my employer shipped me off to the armpit of Western civilization that is New Jersey. In Jersey (even in a collegiate little town like Princeton) you can't get around without a car. Believe me, I tried. But after wasting hours waiting for the NJT trains that never come, and dodging insane motorists while walking down the side of a major highway to get to the grocery store, I conceded that I would need to get a car. I ended up purchasing a used 2000 Toyota Corolla, with surprisingly low mileage. It cost me 3,000 dollars, and I suppose that I really got my money's worth, because I beat up that car something awful. In a year, I put on 60,000 miles. I crashed it twice. I had to have the breaks replaced. And, after a weekend road trip to Boston, I had to have something important completely re-tuned (I am not sure what the actual technical term was - I just ended up paying the mechanic 200 bucks while enduring multiple looks of scorn from him and his staff).

When I finally quit my job and moved back to New York, I parked the car in my mom's driveway, and forgot about it. I literally forgot about it. It was standing there for a little over a year when my mom called to tell me that the car was making funny noises. It turns out that the battery died, and the alarm system started making a sort of "somebody put me out of my misery" whimpering sound. I guess that somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that you can't just leave a car for a year without starting it up once in a while, and expect everything to be ok. I mean, I must've had this knowledge somewhere in my head, because when the mechanic explained to me the consequences of my stupidity (dead transmission, rusty breaks and gears, flat tires, etc.) I listened to him with perfect calm and comprehension. I had to agree that what he was saying made perfect sense.

I waited in the auto shop for about 5 hours while the full staff toiled to bring the car back to life. Periodically, one of them would come up to me and ask me (with an incredulous expression) whether I knew anything at all about cars, and I'd have to tell him that no, I really didn't. When they finally got it running again, they made me sit through a long lecture about proper car maintenance. They told me all about oil changes, tire rotations, antifreeze, and winter proofing. I nodded my head and promptly forgot everything they said five minutes later.

Which brings us to the present. This morning I did some research online and found this article that gives you a checklist of things to do to make sure that your car starts up in the winter. This other site gives an equally unintelligible checklist. Since I have no clue what a "serpentine engine belt" is, this weekend I am going to bring the car to the mechanic and tell him to do whatever it is that he does, and also not to rip me off too much.

Oh god, I hope the MTA doesn't strike.