Car Talk (and car woes)

Betty, our 17-year-old Volvo 240 Station wagon, has been having transmission trouble. We would drive it for 5 minutes before it would shift out of 2nd, which meant we could only go 20 mph, max during that time period. Which means we would get honked at and passed even on roads such as Washington Street in Dorchester (which is very similar to Cambridge St in Cambridge for those more familiar with Cambridge - the double parking is similarly off the hook).

We realized this was our chance to get on Car Talk. Chris called in, and was asked to be on the show! This was very exciting for us. For me, in particular. I'm not in to the whole reality-TV, I really wanna be famous trend, but boy, do I love Car Talk. This was like winning American Idol for me.

They taped the segment with him last week, and if it gets produced, will probably be on the Jan 24th show. Or, they may never produce it. But either way, Chris had a fun time talking with Click and Clack.

Since it was the transmission, and given the car is only worth about 3K, we did some serious soul searching before deciding if we should fix her if the transmission needed to be rebuilt. We looked at other cars, text drove a few, and decided we would really just like to keep our old car moving. She only has 162,000 miles on her! That's about half what other Volvo 240s have been known to do.

We took the car into the garage (we take her to Good News Garage in Cambridgeport for major work) last Friday. This garage is about a 10-minute walk from the Ashe's apartment, so we camped out there for the day. Wow, was it fun to play dress-ups with Elizabeth:


And Dex loved playing with Brian, and the bunny-in-residence, Toulouse

Turns out we had a cracked radiator that was allowing anti-freeze to mix into the transmission fluid, for those of you who care. And I was also told that they would not let me drive home because the tie rod ends in the steering column were almost rusted out. Which meant I could have lost steering at any point and wrecked the car.

So we took the train home, which was fine, except that I realized after we got off the train at Shawmut that I had given the guys at the garage ALL my keys, expecting to drive the car home that day. It was 4:30, Frankie hadn't napped in 4 days and was a mess, Dexter only took about a 20 minute nap on the way home, it was 20 degrees and snowing, and I was locked out of my house. I called Chris, and agreed to take a cab to the McDonald's in Codman Square where I decided we would head to wait for Daddy to come (I think he could hear the tears in my voice). He showed up around 5 and we all ate and early dinner there. I'm pretty sure he's the only person in history to take a cab to the McDonald's in Codman Square.

The car has now been back to the shop, and will have to go back once more - it's still not fixed, but hopefully will be soon!