Happy Birthday to my car!

It was seven years ago today that I finally decided that my old car, which had been having many many troubles, should finally be replaced. I drove it over to Berkeley, cleaned it inside and out, waited an hour so that it would start again (one of the problems it was having), and then drove over to the Honda dealership. Now, the catch was that I had to spend at least an hour looking and test driving before I could hand over the keys to my old car. Any less than an hour, and the car wouldn't start. While I was there, I laid my eyes on this beauty...


(Not my actual car...)

So, it was seven years ago today, and approximately 62,000 miles ago, that I got my beloved Honda Civic. I was all set to celebrate with it today, take it out for a nice dinner and maybe some cake afterwards, but alas, my poor baby had troubles yesterday. After driving me down to Hayward for a soccer game (a hard-fought 3-2 loss for my team), it wouldn't start up to take me home. Thinking it was probably just a battery issue, I got one of my teammates to give me a jump, figuring that the drive back home would recharge the battery. That worked for about a mile. Of course, this time, I was stuck in the middle of traffic. Oh, and my car is completely automatic, which means that the hazard lights won't work when the car is totally dead. And AAA put me on hold. Aw crap. Fortunately for me, my coach drove by after a few minutes, and he and a random stranger pulled over and helped me to move my car out of the intersection onto a side street.

Fortunately, I have AAA Plus, which gives me 100 miles of free towing. And a tow truck that showed up in less than 30 minutes. Thank you to Joshua, the AAA driver. He rocked. He drove me and my car back up to El Cerrito, where my car is currently sitting right now. The service guys will look at it tomorrow, and I'm expecting them to tell me it's an alternator issue, but we'll see. Fortunately, I'm car sitting for some friends of mine, so I can use their car while I wait for mine to get fixed. But in the meantime, no birthday celebration for my car. :(