Poor Lurp

It must be Monday...

Mondays are my longest day of the week (as far as school is concerned anyways). While not as bad as other semesters I've got three classes, a break for a couple of hours and then an awful lab from 3:00-6:00 PM. Today during my break I went up to a design team meeting in Farmington for a big development (around 1,000,000 square feet) we are working on there. On my drive up, the interstate was clear for a couple of hundred yards ahead of me, but out of the blue my windshield was smacked with a rock leaving a chip out of my window. I had to leave the meeting early to get back to my lab and while getting onto the freeway I hit a decent sized pothole. I was hoping that nothing serious had happened but I could tell that my alignment was screwed up. A couple of miles down the interstate, I knew that my tire was flat as well so I pulled over to change it.

I pulled the spare and tools out of the trunk and was pleased to see that everything was there in good condition as I’ve never had a flat in Lurp (fyi. Lurp is my car) before. I took off two of the lug nuts and got the other two started but was having trouble getting them off. For probably 15-20 minutes I sat there trying to unscrew the lugs but the threads had obviously been ruined. Trying one last time, I busted the whole bolt off one of them. There were only four lug nuts and I figured that I would feel okay driving with three of them connected, but I still had one more nut to take off. I didn’t want to break it, but I figured I had nothing to lose seeing as I’d be calling a tow truck anyways. Well, I busted the last bolt off and then didn’t feel safe driving on a spare tire held on by two lug nuts so I called for a tow.

My Grandpa came and picked me up (Ada was sleeping and needed her sleep because she was sick) and we followed the tow truck into Salt Lake where I had the car dropped off. They were able to repair the rim and lug nuts, I had to get 2 new tires (the one had run-flat damage and I replaced the other because it was pretty well worn) and get an alignment done. $400 later, Lurp is good as new.

Two weeks ago we spent almost $900 repairing Lurp’s clutch. Last week we spent $770 replacing the Malibu’s brakes (front and back) and getting it to pass inspection and registered. And to think that only four weeks ago Alison and I were talking about how we haven’t had to have any big car repairs done for quite some time. That’s the last time we’ll say that aloud.