Today Josh left for Jordan for 3+ weeks. Within an hour of his departure, the car wouldn’t start. I can’t make this stuff up. It’s like it senses his proximity to the island and as soon as he is out of range, it all goes haywire. (see also: this time last year)
The car started fine first thing in the morning, though it did sound a little more sluggish than normal, and I drove to Pilates. An hour later I went out to the parking lot to drive home and “click-click,” nothing. I was sweating in a firebox of a car, staring at the gauges in disbelief, with a grocery bag full of frozen items in the back seat. Now what?
Praise be that this time I had a built in escape hatch! One week ago Josh and I bought a second car to make years 3 and 4 here a bit easier with scheduling and transporting of kids. It had already paid off once this morning when Josh had an early report time before his flight and it was about to pay off again when I realized that somewhere in the parking lot, I had another car to drive home. A friend and I separated and stalked the rows of cars until I spotted my little Land Rover — it’s a Freelander, so it’s compact, not the typical Land Rover beast.
This isn’t my car, but similar enough. Ours is sand colored, has a few more scratches and dings, but it has a working battery so I love it!
I was happy I had been lazy and told Josh instead of driving him in, I’d figure out how to get his car home from base later in the week. Instead, I was going to have to figure out how to get my own car home . . . someday. I messaged Josh, venting that this sort of stuff always happens when he’s off with the Marines, figuring he’d get it when he landed. A few minutes later I was surprised to get a message back that he was still in limbo, waiting on a broken plane. Long story short, his flight ended up being cancelled and they were returned to base to go home for the evening. Take that, car gremlins! Josh was able to jump the car, call the mechanic, and arrange to have a new battery installed tonight. I think we’ve had to replace the battery every year/18 months that we’ve lived in the Middle East. I think this is our 3rd — the heat is hard on them and when they die, they go without warning.
I’m hoping that we got our obligatory car problems out of the way and that there isn’t a repeat when he leaves again tomorrow. At least I’ll still have a substitute car to fall back on!
