My Two-Week Summer – Part 1: Car Drama

You might think that I forgot a noun after “summer,” a noun such as “vacation.” But no, I had only two weeks of “summer” thanks to my comps not being done until 7 Aug, and classes starting the week of 24 Aug. As a result I didn’t blog very much during mid or late August because I had to squeeze in every bit of fun that I could into that short window. So my next few posts will be a recap of my post-comps August.
Back in early summer I thought I’d be heading back to Wisconsin right after comps. A little wrench got thrown into those plans in mid-July when I found out that my car, my 1991 Mazda 626 GT, was no longer safe to drive on the highway. I got my oil changed at Valvoline, and the guy who changed my oil informed me that the undercarriage of my car was rusting badly, and that I should probably try to get a different vehicle within a year. Hmmm…
A couple days later I took it to my mechanic here in State College, whom I trust and is really honest, for a second opinion. He said the same thing, that I should get a different car in a year, but he gave a more serious warning: he said that my frame and everything was rusting out so badly, and that the pieces that connect the frame to the body were either rusting off or had already rusted off, that if I were to hit a big pothole at freeway speeds, there was a chance my car might just crumple in the middle. Yikes! He told me that my car was basically still safe to drive as long as I didn’t get into an accident, but if I did have an accident, it wouldn’t be good. So with that knowledge I decided that it’d be a really bad idea to drive a thousand miles back to Wisconsin. I figured I could still drive around town fairly safely though, since if I got into a low-speed accident it probably wouldn’t be too bad. And my mechanic also said that I could get $25 for the Mazda if I took it to a junkyard, but that he’d also be willing to buy it from me for $25. That also took a load off my mind, knowing that I didn’t have to mess with selling it on Craigslist or anything like that.
Fortunately, at about that same time, my parents bought a new 2009 Ford Edge, and they were looking to downsize and get rid of their 1997 Ford Taurus. So my parents decided to give that to me. Sweet! Saved me the trouble of having to try to find a “new” car on my own, which I was especially glad about as I was preparing for comps and had enough to worry about. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to get back to Wisconsin so that I could pick it up and drive it back to Pennsylvania.
Enter Alex. It turned out that it’d work out for him to come down from northern Michigan to State College once he finished his duties up at UMBS, and that then I’d be able to get a ride back to Wisconsin with him. Suh-weet!! He came down to to State College on the 15th of August, and then on the morning 17th we took care of unloading all the crap from my Mazda (a couple days earlier I’d already removed my stereo deck), and then driving it over to the mechanic to sell it. For $25. It was a good car, and served me well. When I first started driving it in early 2001, it had a mere 167,000 miles. And by the time that I sold it a couple weeks ago it had 232,165 miles. It lived a good life. And just like I figured all along would happen, it rusted out before the engine gave out.
So my “new” Taurus is a major upgrade. It’s rust-free currently, and had a shade over 199,000 miles when I put the title in my name. Oh, and all the windows and doors work, and the air conditioning works too! It had a cassette deck though, and it’d be too much work to swap that out for my MP3 CD stereo deck that I bought for the Mazda back in 2005, so I just bought a cassette adapter so that I could hook up my iPod. So with that, I’m now all set with my vehicle situation for the rest of my time at Penn State, hopefully.
Anyway, more about my time with Alex and then my time in Wisconsin & Minnesota in upcoming posts. I figure breaking it up into smaller posts would be a nice change from one super-massive post, for a change. 🙂