Do you ever have one of those days? You wake up, things are good, you’re looking forward to how things should go, and then all of a sudden…. *bam* a big fat wrench gets thrown in your plans. And then another wrench. And then another. And then maybe a crowbar for good measure. And, at first, you get angry and you wonder what the fuck you did to deserve a day like today. And then a wrench hits you in the shoulder and you laugh. And then another wrench hits you in the face and you laugh even harder. Because, at this point, pretty much everything has gone wrong and that somehow cancels it all out. Plus, you’re a bit woozy from all those wrenches to the head.
Have you ever had a day like that?
I’m having a day like that.
It started out well. I managed to get my ass out of bed on time. Not an easy feat considering the two-pronged attack of sleep deprivation and lingering jet-lag. I made a quick stop at the local Stop&Shop for some provisions and then I was off on the road heading towards Verdant Studio in VT to (hopefully) finish up my album.
“Wow,” I thought as I sat at a stoplight, “the guy behind me should really get his brakes looked at. They sound terrible.”
I made it all the way out to Concord before I realized that, hey, I’ve had several different people behind me now. They can’t all have bad brakes.Â
Crap.
That’s my car.
Well, Kristian’s car.
The noise was high-pitched, irritating and could be heard over the radio. It didn’t seem to matter if I was stopped, started, accelerating, braking, whatever. The noise. Would. Not. Stop. And it was getting louder (which is why I was probably no longer able to deny that those horrible screeching sounds were coming from my car).
“Hmmmm,” I thought, “that is probably not a good noise for a car to make in the middle of a three hour car trip.”
(This is probably the most intelligent thought that I’ve had all day).
(Possibly all year).
I will save you the boredom of the saga of calls to Kristian, calls to the dealership, calls to find out if there was someplace, ANYPLACE, that I could take the stupid car to that didn’t involve me driving all the way back from whence I had come and then some.
I ended up driving all the way back to the North Shore. I could practically wave at our house and then kept going.
The repair guys at the dealership recognized the noise as soon as I drove into the shop. Actually, I think that they recognized it a good five minutes before I drove into the shop. Like I said, it was loud.
The guy said that he was pretty sure that it was a valve and that he hoped to have me on my way post haste. I promised him an autographed copy of my album if he could help me get up to VT in time. I also performed my own variation of the noise for him (I’d been practicing in my head in case it went away before I got to the shop). He laughed, but that might just be because he was trying to get me to stop going “EEEEeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”
Yeah, you try driving all the way up to Danvers listening to that.
*Shudders*
This is where the day took a brief turn for the better. It was, indeed, a valve problem and it was fixed, under warranty in the time that it took me to read a couple chapters of my book and eat some Chex Mix. I didn’t have to pay a cent for the repair and I drank two bottles of their water. Score one for the Hopester. Apparently having a broken bleeder valve can cause either performance problems or a critical build-up of pressure resulting in explodinations. It’s definitely a good thing that I took the car in. Knowing my luck, the busted valve would have had kablammo consequences.Â
I drive too much like an old woman to notice performance problems.
I was back on the road, but my luck was not to last. I won’t go into the boring details, but it involved rainstorms, running low on oil in the middle of nowhere (the dealership checked out everything but the oil levels while they had the car), roads being out, bridges being out, detours, getting stuck behind a slow-moving truck for approximately 17,462 miles with no chance of passing and some other stuff that I have now successfully repressed.
Let’s just say that, halfway through my trip, I was fuming… and by the end I was laughing.
You have to laugh. It’s pretty fucking funny when everything that can possibly go wrong manages to do so.
But, hey, I made it to Vermont in one piece. Kristian’s car now has a new bleeder valve, whatever that is, and he owes me $7 for the quart of oil that I had to purchase in Nowheresville, NH. The album is sounding fantastic (hey, maybe some day you can all hear it) and mixing is going really well. Even with me showing up five and a half hours late, we’re still somehow on schedule. I am so ridiculously excited about this whole project, it’s not even funny.
Just one of those days.
