Almost as boring as stories about cats going to veterinatrians are stories about auto repairs. Get out the sleeping bags, say I!

Several months ago I detailed the story of two blowouts I had between September and December of last year. I thought I had nailed this down to the crappy valve extensions I had bought, but now I gotta wonder.

First, back in about March I started noticing my car pulling to the right, almost like a wind was blowing it that way. A check of the trees revealed there was not even a breeze in sight. This pull was only noticable when I was going about 65 or 70 mph. After a few weeks of this I took it to the Sears Auto Center to have the alignment checked, and it was only out by a dab. They fixed it for $65. Drove it away...it still felt like it was pulling to the right, but I had the computer printout proving I was a paranoid shithead, so I trucked on.

A couple of weeks ago my dad mentioned my right front tire looked a little low. I had only checked it maybe a week earlier and it was fine, so I drove on without a thought. Monday or Tuesday on my way home from work I started thinking, "Uh-oh...what's that sound?" When I pulled over to see what was going `round, it wasn't my right front tire, because it was flat as a flitter. SHIT! Attempts to revive it with an air hose were futile because I could hear it seeping even as I was airing. At least it didn't explode like before.

Tow Truck Ride from Purgatory

Some guy with a ponytail showed up with his tow truck to get me to Sears. I showed him my box of Little Feat and Led Zeppelin but he turned out to be a Travis Tritt kind of guy. Anyhow I was glad to have an expert giving me a lift.

I've never been in the cab of a big truck, but I don't think that's what was making me nervous as hell. This guy was looking at me, out the side window, anywhere but where he was going as we rolled down I-285. Sometimes he would take his hands off the wheel completely to gesticulate while he was talking to me, and he barely had his hands on the wheel anyhow. He held it with the fingertips of one hand on the spoke instead of gripping the wheel with both hands. If we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic going 30 I wouldn't have thought a thing of it, but going 65 in a big, wobbly truck? Closing my eyes only made me afraid there was a wreck in progress I didn't know about. I found staring between the top of the windshield and the roof to be most comfortable.

The fear reached a peak when we were merging between I-285 and I-75. This guy was literally three or four feet from the bumper of the lady in front of us, and was saying, "C'mon, lady!" She started trying to get left to escape his tailgating, but there was a car there, so she was obviously slowing down trying to squeeze in. That seemed lost on this guy, though, who stayed right on her bumper. I couldn't take anymore, and raised my feet up in front of me to brace for impact. I only hoped the end would be quick and painless.

We made it to I-75 without getting onto a Faces of Death video, but now this guy was about to up the ante: he put on his left blinker and accelerated up to 80. Now, I drive 80 all the time, but...that's me, and I know what I'm doing! This guy I wasn't so sure. Finally I said, "Y'know, I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but...could you slow down? I mean I know you do this all day every day, but..." He laughed and said he respected that and slowed back down to 65, and I could nearly take it after that, although it looked like he was going to flip over some curbs on the way to the mall.

I got a new right front tire and added the Road Hazard insurance. That was about $110, a relative bargain.

Lights, Cameras...Lights?

Recently I detailed how a bunch of bulbs had mysteriously gone out on my car. Some of them I had only replaced a few months earlier. Fortunately that trip to the dealership was only about $50.

A week ago I was driving at night and found the light behind the gas gauge had burned out. I figured the manual would address an easy fix for that, but it didn't. The Internet only suggested that would be a hellaciously tedious repair even for an expert, so I took it to Toyota expecting another nice $50 repair.

The whole dashboard would have to be removed, and that was a two-hour labor minimum, they informed me. $190! Well...I already got up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday for this, and I did want to be able to read my gauges at night, so...okay.

One hour later they were done. I asked why I was being charged two hours' labor when it only took one, but he said that was a minimum; four seven hours' labor they often only charged for three. I asked him if they could find some busy work for another six hours to make it worth my $190, and he promptly blackened my eye. Not really.

So I'm here with a warm blanket and a cup of chicken soup trying to recover from the fact changing the bulbs in the dashboard cost $200 when that could've been spent on even more guitars and effects pedals.

Though you would get the impression the mighty Toyota Corolla isn't as invincible as it's made out to be, notice all of these fix-its are for "accessories" and not major mechanical problems: lightbulbs and tires. Why these things are fritzing out all the time I can't imagine, or is just the way things are?

So that was this morning's adventure.