the curse of the ... ?

For comprehension of the following saga, it will help to know that mirrorthaw and I have three cars: the elderly psychotic Swedish car, otherwise known as a 1997 Saab 9000 Turbo, the truck, and the Zipzop, a Miata convertible which I do not drive because I can't drive stick. (That's not quite true. I can drive stick, technically, but I'm always terrified that I'm going to rip the transmission out of the car, so I drive stick Very Badly.)

Mostly, I drive the elderly psychotic Swedish car because I am very fond of it.

Saturday night I am driving home from WisCon at 11 p.m. when suddenly the exhaust becomes approximately nineteen times louder. A few miles later, I realize I can hear a new and ominous sound, which I have the horrible suspicion is the tail pipe dragging against the surface of the road.

Driving home from WisCon is a wee bit of a hike for me, and much of it is through relatively unpopulated areas. Also, I read In Cold Blood at a particularly impressionable point in my adolescence. I keep driving until I can find a well-lit, though deserted, parking lot, and get out to look, and oh yes indeedy, that would be the tail pipe hanging down from the car like a dislocated limb.

I call mirrorthaw. We agree that since I've gotten most of the way, I might as well drive the car home and then take the truck the next day.

Please notice: this is 11 p.m. on a Saturday on a holiday weekend. The Saab has a magnificent sense of timing.

The truck is a truck. I can drive it, though not gracefully, and I hate parking the son of a bitch. But it's all good, and I drive in for the Sunday of WisCon.

Sunday night I am driving home from WisCon at 12:30 a.m. when suddenly there is a police car in my rearview mirror with all the lights going.

I am two fucking blocks from home.

The nice young policeman asks if I know why he's pulled me over. I have no idea and am smart enough not to try guessing. He tells me the left brake light is out, and also I used enough of the road in making the turn that put me in front of him that I think he suspects I might be drunk. Also when he asks for proof of insurance, the card I find is expired. Despite this, he decides I am not drunk and gives me a verbal warning.

I drive the last two blocks home and am possibly a little snippy with mirrorthaw--undeservedly, since it turns out there is a whole side quest here about the truck's left brake light which mirrorthaw is still questing.

So if you've been keeping score, you will notice that we are now down to the Zipzop, which I do not drive and which has a trunk that is quite possibly smaller than a breadbox. That's going to become relevant here in a moment.

Happily, mirrorthaw is willing to come in with me on Monday, since there's not all that much WisCon left in WisCon, so we drive in. I have agreed to help kate_nepveu by mailing the con_or_bust t-shirts back to her, since Memorial Day interfered with her original cunning plan to get them in the mail herself. There are rather more t-shirts than I was expecting. Which would not be a problem if I were driving the Saab! As I had fully intended to be!

...

We now know how many t-shirts it takes to fill the trunk of a Miata. Or we will if Kate counts them when they make it home to her. Because seriously. Snakes-in-a-can full of t-shirts. But mirrorthaw got the trunk to close.

Blessings upon the Zipzop, it did not do anything interesting either going or coming.

Monday evening, mirrorthaw took a stab at tying the tail pipe back up, but the undercarriage of the Saab defeated him. Which brings us to today. I have the Saab, the Miata, and two enormous boxes of t-shirts that I really want to get in the mail. I called a local repair shop. They can't get me in until tomorrow, and the guy said dubiously, "A Saab? Well, I can look at it." I called the Saab place. They allowed as how a person might want this issue resolved and said they'd try to work me in during the afternoon. We also agreed that driving the car with the tail pipe dragging on the ground was contraindicated.

I called my acupuncturist and canceled the appointment I'd had for this afternoon.

Then I called AAA, wondering if the tow-truck guy would be persuadable to stop by a post office, and if he'd let me bring two enormous boxes of t-shirts with me in the cab of his truck. Happily, I didn't have to try that charisma roll, because the awesome tattooed tow-truck guy, equipped with a jack, a coat hanger, and a lot of experience in these matters, tied the tail pipe back to the car in such a way that it did not, in fact, fall off again as I drove it to the Saab place.

(Meanwhile, mirrorthaw is working on that side quest about the truck's left brake light.)

Shaking a defiant fist at the perversity of inanimate objects, especially cars, I stopped at the post office on the way to the Saab place and got the t-shirts in the mail.

I don't know how many of you have driven cars with mufflerfail, but it's really rather like driving a small annoyed dragon. Perhaps not surprisingly, the faster you drive, the less annoyed the dragon becomes. The elderly psychotic Swedish car's new name is Lindorm.

It is the muffler, the Saab place is ordering the part and gave me a loaner Saab 9-3 (I find it kind of cute how hard the 9-3's dashboard is trying to look like a airplane cockpit), and I have found the receipt from the last time we had the muffler replaced, in 2006, which means that most magical of all words, warranty, is relevant.

But thank goodness WisCon ended before I ran out of cars.

WisCon Reading: After the Dragon

For anyone who was at the reading Saturday and would like to read the rest of the story, it's "After the Dragon" and it's here.