Son of a........

I think I might be jinxed.

A little over a week ago, one of my good friends, Mike, had quite a health scare. By the time the doctors were done with him, he wasn't feeling up to mowing his lawn. So my best friend, Chuck, and I loaded up our lawn mowers last weekend and headed over to Mike's house to spiffy up his yard for him. Everything was going fine for about 15 minutes until I threw a belt on my self-propelled lawn mower. As the belt came off, it fell into the blade, so it got pretty mangled. Having virtually no mechanical skills myself, I stopped Chuck from his mowing and had him and Mike take a look at it. In return, I decided to use Chuck's mower to continue mowing while he figured out how to repair my mower. I grabbed the handle, yanked on the cord, the engine fired up, and about two steps later, smoke started billowing everywhere, and oil was spraying out the side of the engine. Yes, I managed to kill two mowers in the span of about three minutes.

Fast forward to last night. Being Father's Day weekend, I wanted to take my dad to dinner. I was going to take him in my new Toyota Sienna van that I blogged about repeatedly in April. You know, the one that did so much better in performance, maintenance, and owner satisfaction than most other makes of vans in all the publications. The one that has only 2200 miles on it and hasn't even been in our driveway for two months. My dad had seen the van, but he had never ridden in it, so it was my opportunity to show off my new wheels.

About halfway to the restaurant, I realized that the air conditioning was no longer blowing cold air. This alone was distressing, as it was a hot day, I loathe heat and humidity, and earlier in the day, I had gotten dangerously overheated while mowing my lawn with my self-propelled mower minus the self-propulsion. (No, it's still not fixed. There is apparently no store in the western hemisphere that has the proper replacement belt in stock.) So I was already hypersensitive to the heat, and now my air conditioning wasn't working. I was not happy.

A little further down the road, my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. My heat gauge was pegged on Hot, but then fell all the way to Cold, back to Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot, and finally fell permanently to Cold. And as we stopped at a red light, the van idled roughly for a few seconds and then died. I got it restarted and got into the turn lane before it died again. Got it restarted once more, limped through the intersection, and eased into a nearby parking lot. It would stall out, I'd get it restarted, and it would stall out a couple minutes later. Over and over again.

So I called the Mrs., who had to pull Olivia and June out of the bathtub to come get us. As we waited for the Mrs. to arrive, I told my dad that my plan was to take some back streets to get as close to the nearest Toyota dealership as I could, and then just cross my fingers that I could make it across the very busy, multi-lane road that I'd have to cross to get into the dealership. But each time I restarted the van after it stalled out, it would run for a shorter period of time. Eventually, I revised my plan. I wasn't willing to risk trying to get to the dealership.

Fortunately, I have a BlackBerry that I haven't yet broken, so I used it to get on the Internet and locate some local wrecker services. The first number I called, no one answered. The second number I called, someone picked up the phone, and never said anything. I could tell that someone was on the other end, but when I said "Hello? Hello?" no one responded. The third number I called, someone answered, but he informed me that he doesn't do towing anymore. He gave me the number, though, of someone he knew that does towing. So I called that number. It was disconnected. I couldn't even get a damn tow truck.

My dad, somehow sensing my frustration as I was screaming expletives in the middle of a parking lot for three minutes straight, cut the tension with some timely humor. My rage subsided, and I started thinking clearly again. Who have I repeatedly told my kids to call when they need help? The police. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

So I called the non-emergency number for our local Dispatch, identified myself and explained my problem. The Dispatcher graciously offered to send a wrecker my way. Problem solved.

While I waited for the wrecker, the Mrs. arrived and took my dad back to our house, where he got in his car and headed in my direction. The wrecker and my dad arrived almost simultaneously, the wrecker driver was very friendly and helpful, we got the van towed to the nearby dealership, and my dad and I headed to dinner in his car, two hours after our ordeal began.

The bright side to all of it was that the restaurant we went to had draft beer on sale for $2.00 a glass. Dad and I ended up having a great meal and great conversation, so it wound up being quite an enjoyable evening.

I'm just not sure that I want to touch anything that has an engine for awhile.