It all started out so slackworthy. The wife & I usually ride to work together, since I drive right past her place of employment on the way to work. She had something to do right after work yesterday, so I let her drive the "good" car and I drove my PoS, beat-all-to-smurfpoop truck. So I'm on my way to another day of doing nothing at the office, when the truck just shuts off. No amount of beating on the dash and cursing will get it started, so I'm all out of options.
It's really early, as a result, I am unable to get anyone on the phone. Left with no other options, I walk. Five miles. I live out in the middle of nowhere as you will recall, most people I know can't find my house without following me there, so probably even if I had been able to get ahold of someone, they wouldn't have been able to find me. Eventually I make it back to where my wife works, and I get the other car from her.
By this time it's about 8:00 am so I'm able to reach someone at work and let them know that I have to rescue the crapmobile so I won't be coming in. Okay, I now have the day off and have things to do. So I go home and watch cartoons for about an hour, no sense getting in a big rush.
Call a guy I know who drives a wrecker, he picks me up, and then we go get the truck. On the way he tells me that he has a projection TV with a bad transistor, but he can't get his big hamfists in there to replace it. Since I have little girly hands and am pretty decent with a soldering iron, I offer to fix the board for him, so we work out a trade. Just saved myself about $35 in wrecker bill.
Time to fix the truck. Discover it's the fuel pump. Further discover that in order to access the fuel pump, the bed of the truck has to come off, because the tank is under the bed and the pump is acessed through the top of the tank. Frack that says I. Ten minutes with some of dad's snazzy air tools and I've got a fuel pump access hole in the bed. Fuel pump is $200, but once I have the hole cut I discover that the problem is a bad ground. Saved another $200. Made a cover for the hole I just cut in the bed and I'm rolling again.
I even traded cars with the wife and took her car to get new tires, and a wheel alignment, then traded back so she could still have her car after work.
I actually did stuff yesterday, I knew you guys would be proud.
-S