Gertie

Last night as I was driving to Arcadia for a photo shoot, my car started to overheat again. I made it to AU in the nick of time, but when I was getting ready to leave, Gertie did not want to start. I called my father, placed him on speaker phone, and tried to start my car again.

"I don't like the sound of that, I'll be right over."

As I sat in my car waiting for my dad to come save me from Arcadia's parking lot, I started to think about how much Gertie and I had been through together. I knew that our time was coming to an end, but I didn't realize how soon it would be.

Gertie has been in my life since June of 2009, but she has been in existence since 1995. I found her on Craig's List and it was love at first sight. It also helped that she was only $700, but I mostly loved her because of her wonderful teal color. My parents and I met a shady man in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot to look at Gertie and the rest is history.

Gertie had a ton of problems when I first got her: (including, but not limited to) a broken key stuck in the ignition (multiple times), inability to lock the doors, a messed up transmission, and the ability to start the car with any and every key. Luckily when I first got Gertie, I was attending tech school and the automotive students were able to fix many of her problems. (It was much cheaper since I only had to pay for parts instead of having to also pay for labor.) 

The laundry list of issues did not stop there, though. As Gertie grew older, she developed issues with her heating coil, which was ultimately the cause of her untimely death, issues with her windows, and difficulty shifting on the highway. Gertie became accustomed to wearing duct tape on her driver's side window for the last six months of her life because the window no longer stayed up on its own. And who could forget the god awful sound her back doors made when they opened...

Gertie has traveled all over New Jersey countless times. She's been my mode of transportation to visit some of my best friends in the whole wide world and without her I'm not sure how this will be possible. She's taken me to and from multiple Union, Flyers, and Philles games. She's accompanied me to numerous photo shoots, has let me climb onto her roof to get the perfect shot, and has helped me to make some incredible memories.  She lost a mirror the first time we drove to Manayunk and has been hit/scratched up in parking lots more times than I can count (mostly because I wasn't present for most of her cuts and scrapes).

Gertie was a wonderful first car and I'm so happy she lived as long as she did.

Thanks for the memories, Gertie!

Public Service Announcement

Over the weekend, I had one of my first awful car experiences and I had to deal with it alone. My wonderful car, Gertie, had a bit of a mishap and decided to overheat pretty badly. To be fair, I hadn't been diligently checking my coolant/anti-freeze levels, but I swear I was about to do it as soon as I had gotten to my destination... Any way, I had basically lived out my dad's biggest fear with this car: breaking down far enough away from home that he wouldn't be able to bail me out. I was driving down the off ramp and onto 130 in Jersey when may car just pretty much shut off. It was pretty damn terrifying, but I tried to maintain my cool and look for a shoulder to pull off onto. Just my luck, there wasn't a shoulder, but instead a shady little driveway that I could partially glide onto before my car decided it did not want to go any further. 

Spending some quality time with
Gertie on 130

I did everything my wonderful father had taught me to do: put on my hazards, open the hood, and then call him for help. Being stranded on the side of the road in Jersey was not the phone call he wanted to get, but hey, shit happens right?

After trying to figure out what the hell had actually happened, it dawned on my dad that I had not been listening to him and monitoring the fluids in my car. (He wasn't wrong, but I swear I was going to do it later...) My dad decided my best bet was to tow the car to Tess' house (which was seriously only FIVE MORE MINUTES AWAY FROM WHERE I BROKE DOWN), let the car cool off, and then add the anti-freeze to it later. I called Tess and laughed my way through my predicament and she said she would call her dad to see if he knew a tow truck. Instead of sending a tow truck, her dad and step-mom came to help me out themselves, which was seriously the best thing ever.After sitting with my hood up on the side of the interstate for about forty five minutes, it had cooled down enough to add the anti-freeze and get me back on the road.

I'm so thankful that I have so wonderful people in my life who so graciously offered to help me out. Shout out to everyone I snap chatted and offered a hand as well. Also, shout out to all of the assholes who drove by me on the side of the road and honked at me as if I purposefully stopped my car partially in a lane because I wanted to do it. 
From now on, I am going to take better care of my baby. She's been in my life for about seven years now and she is quite old (almost twenty-one!) so she needs extra attention.

This has been a public service announcement in the form of a story so I hope you all take better care of your cars than I do so you don't have to learn the hard way.

Thank goodness for best friends,
beer, and the Sons of Ben <3
(Neshaminy Creek Brewing Co. was Tess
and I's final destination on Saturday.)