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Who's Gonna Tow Your Wild Horses?

prevFeb. 25, 2005 - 11:17 p.m.next

So here's with the craziness this week. Or, rather, one day this week. Tuesday, to be exact. After a morning of driving all over town, getting my new driver's license (now I am again a NC resident), I went to Charlotte to do more errands. Having finished my errands, I got back in the car to go to work. Car wouldn't start. It sounded like it was out of gas, but I had just filled it up that morning. Long story short (cause trust me, there's about to be more longness), I called a towtruck. AAA may get something in my will when I die. Buddy shows up with his truck and says the car is in a bad position to get it onto the boom of the truck. I tell him how it won't start and try to crank it to show him. ...only thing is, it starts. He tells me we should still have it towed because it might stop on the way to the mechanics.

He gets the car onto the boom and we leave the parking lot (that sounds soooo much easier than it actually was!). Once out of the parking lot, Buddy uses the hyrdraulic controls to raise the car a bit more...but it won't work. Actually, we hear a slight "pop" noise and smell a sort of greasy, liquid smell. We drive about half a mile and we smell a hot, burning smell now. Buddy calls back to HQ and requests another truck meet him at a parking lot we pull into. When we get there, Buddy can't put my car down. The hydraulics won't work at all. As he is working on this, I suddenly see smoke billowing out from under the hood of his truck and liquid gushing onto the ground. In my most eloquent way, I say, "Umm! There's umm! We've got a problem...the ummm!"

Eventually, Sonny shows up with his truck to take my car. But of course we can't get it down, so Doug shows up to work on the hydraulics.

(left to right: Buddy, Doug, Sonny with Truck 1)

Truck 2

Truck 3

And again I'll cut to the chase: eventually, their supervisor had to come out. He brought with him a representative from Jerr-Dan, the company that makes the hyraulics for the trucks. This guy just happened to be in town teaching a class on opperating these things.

(Left: representative, Right: supervisor)

Mr. Jerr-Dan comes up with the idea of bleeding the line so that the boom will lower from the wieght of my car. It does and we back the car off. Now we have a boom on the ground and it can't drive back to the shop like that. They take Sonny's truck, back it up, and attach the two booms.

They then use Sonny's boom to raise Buddy's boom.

They then chain the boom to itself and prop part of it up with...

yeah, a block of wood.

The initial call went in to AAA at 1:13, I got to work (I work right beside the mechanic it was towed to) at 4:15. Oddly enough, it was a hilarious time and I enjoyed my day. It was so gorgeous out and I had Brewsta on the phone, how could I help but be happy and laugh?

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