Ox in the Mire

On Saturday, I drove down to meet Ian at a theater near his house so that we could watch The Man of Steel.  When I got to the parking lot, my car staled from over-heating.  We decided that we'd still watch the movie and take a look afterwards.  After the film, the car started, but again quickly over-heated.  We decided that I shouldn't drive the thirty minutes back home because it might kill the car.  Instead, I stayed at Ian and Amanda's for the night.

The next morning, we sought out the cause of the problem.  Ian had mentioned to me earlier that a whining sound my car made at ignition was probably a fan belt that would need attention soon, but that it likely could wait until my next oil change.  That sound was absent when I drove to the Larsen's from the theater (about a five minute drive), so we thought it might be the fan belt.  For those of you who don't know (I didn't), the fan or alternator belt powers a fan that sends vaporized coolant into the engine to keep it from overheating, as well as powering the alternator which recharges the battery (my battery light had also come on).  With this in mind, we went to the local Sears to have a mechanic look at it.

After about an hour and a half, they finally got to my car.  It was indeed the fan belt.  The mechanic brought it out to show us: it was shredded pretty well through.  Because of the way that this particular place operated, it was faster for us to go buy a replacement belt and bring it back to them for installation.  Anyway, from the time we first arrived to ask to have the car looked at to leaving with a properly functioning vehicle, it was probably about four hours.  But considering that this could have been a really bad emergency, I was happy to only pay about 50 bucks to see it all end.

I would have preferred to have gone to Church yesterday, but this was a case where my livelihood was in jeopardy, so I know that the Lord understands.