Wow, what a roll this week has been. As soon as we unloaded at our AirBNB in Surf City last Thursday night, we headed out for dinner and my Chevy Lumina just stopped, and then would not crank back up. Some would say that we should have known better than to drive a 25 year old car several hours away, but I thought that it was in better shape than the Honda, it had a working radio, it is a more comfortable ride, and it had just been inspected and checked out by my mechanic. Or SO I THOUGHT.
I won’t go into it in much more detail, except to say that by Monday afternoon, we gave up on the Chevy and exchanged it for the work already done, as junk. This was more emotional than you might think, because my mother loved this car and I bought it from her because it was hard for her to sell it. And I am angry at my mechanic because the mechanic at the beach said that the car had never been maintained. I counted on my mechanic to check it and do what it needed every time I took it in, and I assumed that he had done so. Yet the spark plugs and wires were the originals, the fuel filter had never been changed, and I found that the coolant and oil was low.
Our AirBNB hosts were extraordinarily generous and they handed over the keys to one of their cars for the weekend. Then my sister called and said that they had just bought a new car this weekend, and she and my brother-in-law drove to Topsail Beach and left their old car with me on Sunday afternoon on a detour on their way to Lake Waccamaw.
So, even though the plan was for one of us to follow the Chevy to Chapel Hill and drop off my sister’s car on the way home, my sister’s car is sitting in our driveway, and we need to start shopping for another car.
Car prices are shocking to us since we have not shopped for a car in 13 years, but I knew that they would be. Sandy and I seldom need both cars though, and so we may save up for a larger down payment for a few months. I can’t drive right now anyway because…
My foot began hurting more when I was at the beach – I was standing and walking more, a couple of times in loose sand – and when I came back to work on Tuesday, I couldn’t stand to keep my shoe on. Then I started getting stabbing pains, so Sandy took me to an orthopedic urgent care on Tuesday night, where they put my right leg in a tall boot for six weeks.
The x-rays did not show a break, so I was surprised at the concern. The PA said that it was either bone contusions on three bones on the top of my foot just before my toes (I can’t remember the medical terms) or a stress fracture. So they are treating it like a stress fracture. I get x-rayed again in two weeks.
My Europe trip is scheduled five weeks from now.
Will post photos from the workshop and the beach in the next posts.
slowly she turned 