Curse of the Cars

I don't know what I did to deserve this...

I mean, I LOVE my Subaru. LOVE IT.

I don't wash her as much as I should, but it's a SUBARU, folks. It's kind of implicit that they will be dirty most of the time (unless you have a brand new one with the lovely Teflon coating stuff they can put on it). Subaru even made a commercial implying that.

I keep her gas tank filled and her oil levels are checked regularly. I even buy fancy air fresheners that cost me triple what the regular ones do for her.

And then this morning she decided that she wanted to end it all. Here's what went down:

I was driving to the Woodburn (we have a store there that was recently remodeled and prettified so we had a grand opening thingy this morning for it). I got about 2 miles away from the store and I was busy thinking about driving through Starbucks to get a hazelnut hot chocolate with extra whipped cream when the 'ru started feeling kind of funny. I looked at my dash and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Then my heater stopped working (which I noticed pretty quickly since it was like 36 degrees this morning... maybe it was closer to 50, but that's still cold after the summer weather I've gotten used to). I then, being infinitely wise, decided to pull over and see what was going on. As soon as I came to a complete stop on the shoulder of the road ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. Every light on my dash lit up like it was a New Year's celebration. I jumped out of the car and propped the hood up and then the steam started.

STEAM E'RYWHERE.

So I ran to the back of the car, grabbed the emergency gallon of water I keep (because I'm freakin' more prepared than the boy scouts) and rushed back to the front only to find that a massive OIL EXPLOSION had taken place in my engine compartment in my absence.

OIL E'RYWHERE.

Seriously... there was oil on the battery, on the hood, oil on the random tubing that runs through my car's innards and, finally, OIL IN THE COOLANT TANK. It looked like death sludge had been dumped in there. I quickly realised that this was not just an overheating (which hasn't really ever happened to my car) and called the parents for advice. Parents said,"Call your insurance to get it towed". Which I promptly did, however I failed to mention that I happened to be in BFE (if you don't know what it means, it's akin to middle of nowhere). Tow truck was dispatched with shaky-at-best directions to where I was. Old tractor man pulled over his 5-mile-an-hour tractor and took a look under the old hood. He said, "Looks like you blew a head gasket," and then got back on his tractor and slowly made his way to the end of the barren field I was stranded next to. I then called a Subaru place in Newberg to find that they moved to PORTLAND (not helpful). This left me the one option of having it towed to my house and then looking for a place that could fix it once there.

I had to wait an hour for the tow truck. I then had to ride with the tow truck guy on the WINDING BACKROADS trying not to have a panic attack (I thought they had gone away, news to me!). Once home, I remembered that I purchased a fancy extra warranty thingy for the 'ru. I broke that thing out pronto and called them up to explain the sitch. Warranty guy said, "Just take it anywhere you want to have it serviced and then have them call us for the service estimate and we'll let you know if we can cover that."

Had car towed to Subaru place close to home. Told them what to do... waiting now.

Crossing my fingers and praying with full force that my big fancy extra warranty ACTUALLY COVERS THIS because I pretty much will not be able to fix it if I have to pay for it. I will be a Trimet riding poor girl for a while if so (not that riding Trimet means you're poor, I ride it all the time... you know what I mean).

Here's the deal... pretty much every car I've had has had some... let's call it personality or character... and needed some attention. And then I try to take really good care of them and they just throw in the towl OR crappy high school drivers hit them and total them. I'm taking this as a sign that I need a sparkly brand new car- too bad I don't have that sort of room in my budget right now.

So friends and folks, keep your fingers crossed, or say ten Hail Mary's, or whatever you do for me that the warranty covers it and/or I come into some massive amounts of money and can just buy an new car. Let's break this car curse of mine!