Cars

The car I use, a Toyota Camry, has a six year birthday coming up. This last week, my husband decided to drive it to work as he felt I needed a bigger( safer) car to drive me to work. My work place is farther away from our home than his.

He soon found out that driving a Camry after driving an SUV is not much fun. For one, it is a much smaller car in terms of height. A tall person will realize this soon after he changes cars . Second one feels very unsafe in a sedan. Even though the car gives you up to 120 km/hour of speed, if need be, it would be entirely at your own risk that you would be driving at that speed. It is good for a leisurely drive, very sedate and calming but not when one has a couple of honkers and tail lighters behind you, trying to make you speed against your wishes.

A few rides later, he discovered that the AC of the car doesn’t work as it should. He wondered aloud how I had been driving around with that degree of cooling or non-cooling that it provided. He doesn’t know half the things I have gone through with the Camry and not mentioned to him- these would be the unmentionables. Better they discover it themselves.

Two days later, he asked  me about a red battery indicator showing on the dashboard of the Camry. I said it had been showing up since March and that it had been mentioned to him at that time. That night, he drove the car to the service station to get the battery looked into. A kilometer away from our home and about three kilometers away from the station, the car coughed, spluttered and gave up running. It seemed the long drive to the station was beyond it. It didn’t help that the temperature outside was in the 40s ( degree Centigrade).

Luckily for him I was driving behind the Camry in his Murano and so could give him a ride to the service station to get a mechanic and drive them to the location of the Camry. The Mechanic, temporarily managed to hook a new dynamo to the car engine and they drove the car to the service station, where it has been in residence for the past three days.

The service station gave hubby an ancient Toyota Prado to drive until the Camry could be repaired.

The car story didn’t end there. I was still driving the Murano to work. Yesterday after work I went to the underground parking lot of our university, to drive the car home. The door opened with the automatic key and I sat in the driving seat, turning the ignition on. Apart from a few splutters, the car didn’t start. Again a lot of red battery indicators started showing up on its dashboard. By now I was an expert in this.

I locked the car up, went back to my office and called hubby up. My phone doesn’t work in emergency situations, so I needed to call hubby from the landline office phone. I told him the battery of the Murano had given up and I didn’t know how to get the car out. He told me to get a cab and come home.

The university is in an out of the city place; everyone has his own car, there are no cabs to be had for rhyme or reason. I went back to the parking lot and found a young man called Warren there. He was driving his car out. I stopped him and asked him to look at the battery of my car. Helpful as he was, he stepped out, opened the engine of the Murano, poured some cold water on the battery ,opened a few covers here and there and bringing his car close to the Murano, recharged its battery.

Soon the Murano was alive and making all the correct noises. I could drive home, if I didn’t stop anywhere on the way. This I did and reached home, uneventfully.

Today I am back driving the Camry, which has since been repaired and the Murano is safe with my husband. The old borrowed Prado, languishes in the car shed, waiting for the repair shop man to come and get it.