The Beast in 2014 -no pic of the replacement car
So there I was, holding bulging garbage bags up against our car door. Why? Well . . .
Where and how we live makes a car--cars--a necessity. We live on an island in the St. Lawrence River, reachable by a very long bridge that rises 150 feet over the river, and presently the the only thing open here is the Post Office and the building supply. Can't get gas, groceries, beer or vodka,prescriptions, library books at either of those places, so if we need anything other than stamps and lumber we must go off-island, and pay a toll to come home again.
One vehicle is our main, most used car. That's the one of the most recent vintage, and has the fewest miles.Up until around Thanksgiving that was our 2017 Ford Escape, bought used in '19. That was our third Escape. Our backup vehicle is our old, rather funky '12 Escape, the car of choice for trips to the dump, feed store (6 hay bales at once) and other untidy tasks such as hauling small loads of firewood or bagged chicken manure. We still have our '07 Escape, long off the road and years past the point of legal operation. It should go to the auto dismantler, but we seem to have issues with letting go.
The third vehicle is the Beast (subject of a diary back in 2014) my 2000 7.3 liter diesel dually Ford E 450 work vehicle, essentially a giant rolling toolbox. It's a great work vehicle, will lug a couple tons easy, carry some 16' lumber inside with the rear doors closed, and on a job site I have pretty much a full set of tools for carpentry, painting, electrical work, small and large-scale mechanical work, plumbing, lifting very heavy objects like parts of buildings, plus multiple ladders, chains and cables,ropes, come-alongs, spare parts, and trusty chain saw. But it gets only 11 mpg on diesel, and the toll to cross the bridge (which I have to do to get fuel when I get down to between a half and quarter tank full, a process involving giving the attendant three $50 bills and telling them I hope I get change back) (which I usually don't) is $6. It's not suited for errands, really, any more than a sledgehammer is the best choice of tool for setting thumbtacks.
Besides our work, we do wildlife rehab, which often involves sudden, unexpected trips to various places to retrieve, transfer, and release animals. The Escapes give us decent cargo space for cages and carriers big enough for a bald eagle or random bear cub, reasonable mileage, and all wheel drive for ice, snow, and off-road excursions. They have been the ideal vehicle for us.
Late this summer the '17 started playing Check Engine Light Hide and Seek with us, coming on for a day, going off for a couple weeks, popping up and disappearing again. And it sometimes started smoking for few seconds after starting. I took it to a local shop we trust for an oil change and checkup, they couldn't do much with the POST codes (nor could I with the code tool I keep in the van); it had to go to the dealer. The codes had to be dealt with before it would pass its soon-due inspection.
The dealer we bought it from is about an hour away. Trip one, 4 hours eaten out of a work day, got the determination that one of the coil packs was faulty. Trip two, a week later, over 5 hours, got that fixed for a wincingly expensive price,but they ran out of time to investigate the smoking. Trip three a week after that, 4 hours, was inconclusive; they wanted to keep it overnight. One of their drivers took me home eventually.
That was the trip when I learned there was a fairly rare issue with the 1.5 liter engine, the smoke actually fog from coolant getting into one cylinder, rinsing it out, and the lack of lubrication causing incremental damage to the cylinder each time it started. The bad news: if this was the case Ford would have to put a new engine (short block, actually) in it. The good news,this would happen on Ford's dime. The bad news, this could take three weeks or more, plus probably at least a couple follow-up trips afterward. Three weeks during a very busy part of the year.Manageable only if we got a loaner.
Getting by using only our old, high-mile '12 Escape was going to be a problem for that long, too many instances where we had to go some distance in opposite directions, and we were now in the part of the year when I sometimes had to use the '12 as my back-up work vehicle at certain locations because the Beast is okay in a modest amount of snow, a drunken hippo on roller skates on icy roads, and ruts like a moose on Viagra when there has been a lot of rain. It weighs 5 tons empty and can leave holes deep enough to swallow an average-sized dog on soft, wet ground, and most of the places I caretake don't have paved driveways and parking spaces.
Fearing the worst, I caught up with the sales manager--she had been a lowly salesperson when we bought the'12--before getting that ride home. I laid out the situation, and asked her to please check to see how it would work if we traded in the '17 on something newer: trade value, what was in stock for decent used Escapes, and so on. Hated to consider that option, but we really needed that second car, and our faith in the reliability of the '17 had been badly shaken.
Got the bad news the next morning: new engine required. Worse news: no loaners available.
I had already spent the evening before going over their stock online, winnowing it down to ten possible replacements, with four particular cars offering the best combination of age, mileage, and price. Next the salesman who handled our last purchase called, of course trying to sell us a new car--and with a low-ball trade in number. I countered with an offer on one particular car, telling him if he could manage another thousand of trade-in I'd pony up a bit over ten grand cash for down payment, enough to pay the outstanding (unpaid, not wonderful) balance of the loan for the '17 before putting together a new loan for the newer car.
A couple days later we signed what seemed like a full ream of forms, and took possession--more or less sight unseen--of a 2019 (two years newer) Escape with 10,080 miles, dropping the odometer on our main car by about 55k, and kept the reasonable monthly payment of from before--a must since we're both self-employed and in the 70ish zone.
Yeah, but where do the trash bags come in? Trust me, we're almost there.
The new car does not start with a key.It has a fob. A very nice fob, as the replacement car has remote start, a feature we've had on other cars and loved. Ten below out? Start the car warming without leaving the house. Very nice. But.
Because of where we live we've always just left the keys in the car at home. That seems to be a bad idea with a fob system. If the fob is in the car then the vehicle is partly awake, alert for further commands--we picture it as a dog waiting for their owner to come in the door, tail wagging hopefully and maybe whimpering a bit. Plus the fob is in active communication with the car, meaning the battery in it will have a shorter life--weeks instead of months.
We did not adjust well to having keys--fobs--that had to be kept inside and taken off a board when we needed to use the car. Always forgetting to take one, or ending up with both of them because one was already in a coat pocket. By now you can see where this is going.
We lost a fob. Somewhere. Either one of us had both fobs and lost one, or it is hiding somewhere in the labyrinthine, borderline post-apocalyptic disorder of our rambling old house.
We've revisited every place we went in the days before we realized one fob was missing, and since they are all places we go regularly, if they'd found it--or do find it—they will let us know. We've torn the house apart, searching all the likely places, and a shitload of highly unlikely places, to no avail.
So last week I called the dealer. Lost fob? $130 for the fob. $35 for the emergency door key hidden inside it. $100 programming fee, and a shop fee of--at this point the service person said, that's if you don't have ESP. First thought: If one of us had fucking ESP we'd brainwave the location of the missing fucking fob. Then I realized he meant the extended service plan.
Which, after our last go-round, we had added to our purchase package. That meant it would instead cost the $50 deductible he quoted, much less than the heading toward—or past--$300 of before. So, an hour to the dealer, an hour and a half minimum to do the necessary, an hour home. It could be worse.
But the trash!
One feature of fob life is that if the car is locked when you go to the car with the fob, just taking hold of the door handle will unlock it. So I was presenting our trash—and recycling, and various other possible hiding places--to the car to see if the fob was present. I was freaking modeling the bags for the car, turning them over, rotating them, all the while imploring Clikh,the God of Fobs to intervene as I tried the handle over and over again. My prayers were not answered. An atheist, I was not surprised.
I got a new fob Thursday. The work took about an hour and a half, would have cost $325. There wasn't even a deductible.
Everyone predicts that the missing fob will reveal itself in the next few days. I will believe that when--if--I hang it back up on the damn board.
