Trip To Madison For The New Year

Sarah’s boyfriend goes to school in Madison, and for the New Year, they were planning on going and celebrating.  Since he has been driving them around since they got home for break, Sarah decided to drive her car to Madison for the night.  Kris was a little hesitant because she knows it isn’t the most reliable (and Sarah is VERY hard on the engine).  But I figured it shouldn’t be a problem, so I gave it my blessing.

Then, around 12:30 as I am taking down the Christmas decorations we receive a call from Sarah.  She says her car won’t start.  I had filled her tank and put a bottle of Heet in right before she left so I was fairly certain that the fuel line was fine.  I asked if when she turned the key, the battery was giving juice to the starter in trying to turn it over, and of course I may as well have been speaking Greek to her.  So, since it had gotten down to, I think -12° the night before, and it was still only about 3° in Madison, I told her to first let her car sit for about a half an hour and then to try it again.

Forty minutes later Sarah calls back and says it still won’t start.  I asked her if she needed me to drive there and have a look at it.  She said, no, her boyfriend’s dead was going to drive there and get them.  That didn’t change the fact that I was still going to need to eventually drive to Madison to look at her car, because if something were to have happened that needed to have it towed, he wasn’t going to be doing it.  This lead to complaining, and crying, so I told her, OK, you’re an adult and have it under control, then handle it, and I hung up.

About forty-five minutes later, she called back wanting to know if I was coming.  I asked if she wanted me to or not, and she said yes.  So I put the ornaments down and away so the cats wouldn’t break anything and then got ready to go.  I told Sarah to text me the address and Kris and I hopped in the car to go have a look at her car.  On the way, I stopped at a truck stop/convenience store to get a couple of bottles of Heet, just in case. 

It took a little more than an hour to get there.  When we drove up, Sarah came out to show us where the car was.  When we got to the car, I had Sarah give me her keys and said jokingly, “it better not start up when I try”.  And of course, when I turned the ignition it started up in two seconds.  I walked back to our car and told her to get in, drive it back to her boyfriend’s apartment and get her stuff, but not to turn the engine off.  I would sit outside with it while she went in and then I would follow her home since I wanted to make sure nothing happened on the drive.

Overall, it was about a three hour diversion.  I am still not 100% sure what happened, and why it wouldn’t start, other than the fuel line was frozen and that as the air temp warmed, it unthawed, though it was still only about 5º or 6º when we got there, so it isn’t as if there was a great heat wave the swept in and thawed everything.  I made sure she filled her tank and put another bottle of Heet in, and we’ll have to watch it going forward.