Tuesday morning, I got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the back way into the city simply by trying to avoid another clog on the main route; Apparently something happened somewhere and the entire Beltway slowed to a crawl. Inching forward, somewhere around Oriole Park, I started to smell hot antifreeze, and I knew something wasn’t right somewhere, but I hoped it wasn’t me. As I got onto Pratt Street and edged closer to the Convention Center, I noticed steam coming from under my hood, and pulled the Saturn off into a bus pickup lane to cool off. After a half hour had passed and traffic had cleared up, I hypermiled the last half mile to work, parking on the street so I could refill the reservoir with water. Not once did I hear the fan cycle on, which leads me to believe the thermostat has gone dead (and possibly the EGR valve as well).
In the meantime, my mother’s Subaru, which was just in the shop for a major head gasket overhaul, blew up on her yesterday morning for reasons as yet unknown.
And concurrently, my sister’s Subaru, also coming off some major repairs, decided it would shed a wheel after the bearings gave out.
Now, none of these cars are new—our family has a tradition of driving and maintaining our cars well into the hundreds of thousands of miles, and no person in my nuclear family owns a car under ten years old. It’s just strange that all three cars would decide to get sick on the same morning. What have we done to offend you, mighty Piston, God of Thunder? Have we not made the proper sacrifices, wise Gasket, Bringer of Coolant and Oil?