Thursday, October 23, 2008

It's All In the Timing (Belt)

When Julia and I were driving to the bus stop near our home on Tuesday morning -- her in her car, me in mine -- and we drove through a section of the street with some construction. Julia drove over the first bump, then pulled over to the side of the road. I pulled up behind her to see what she wanted and when I walked up to her car she said it had died when she "hit" the bump.

It was still fairly dark (this was at 7:05am) and I don't know all that much about cars, but I opened the hood to see if something had been knocked loose. No luck. The engine started, but didn't come to life. We called AAA and waited.

When the guy arrived we told him what was up, he looked at the engine, had Julia try to start it again, looked around some more, then said he thought the timing belt was broken and showed me where it should be and wasn't.

Julia's car is . . . old, so most likely the broken belt spells its doom. We had him tow the car home for now, but we'll likely take it to her brother-in-laws so he can either try to fix it or junk it. Since timing belts require a lot of work and are typically very expensive it makes more sense for us to save up and buy something new for her. Unless it can be fixed inexpensively.

We had a chance to talk to Matt (Julia's brother-in-law) on Wednesday night. We went there right after work for his 40th birthday party: a good spaghetti dinner, cake, ice cream, strange relatives with a strange compulsion to give fart-joke birthday cards. You know, the normal things. Bleh.

Regardless, the night was good and it was fun to play with the kids a bit.

On a completely unrelated note; I think I've come up with a name for my gaming blog. One way or another I'll get that up and going very soon.

More later.

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