Vehicle fun!

Ah, the joys of car ownership!

I love cars, loving having a car, love driving a car, love the freedom and mobility that having a car brings. But I hate, hate, HATE having to have my car worked on. Today I finally gave in to the pressure of the "Maint req'd" light on the dashboard and took the car in for service. I knew it was overdue for an oil change, and the tires needed rotating as well.

But that's just it. The service people are never happy JUST doing the minimum stuff. No, they always manage to find something else that needs work. Today was no exception. The phone rang not too long ago.

"Mr. Baldwin, your car needs new front brake pads, and the rotors need to be turned. And you need new windshield wiper refills. The brakes will be $189, and the wipers around $9."

No thanks. I can do wiper blades myself for a whole lot less than $9. And then I recently found out that a friend of a friend is a licensed mechanic, and he does work at his house in his spare time, charging way less in labor fees than the auto dealers charge. So I'll give him a call. Should be a good time to ask him about replacing the clutch in my Mustang as well, as I fear that the clutch won't make it much longer.

But then I'll put all that off as long as I can as well!

Perhaps one of my reasons for not liking to take a car in for service is that fact that they always do want to fix more things than what you take it in for. And so I feel like a bad owner for not having the wigwag tightened, or the lumpjumper replaced. So that the ASPCV (American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Vehicles) will come out and arrest me, and I'll have my face blurred on the next episode of Car Cops.

But assuming they don't find something else to fix on the car today and call me back, I have made it through the latest round with very little grief. Safe for another few thousand miles, until the oil needs changing again.