the jetta is slowly winding its way to the grave. it's been a good little car, especially for the price we paid. and it has tried very hard to do the job of a truck. jetta's have heart, but they ain't trucks.
this jetta has put on god knows how many miles since we got it. saxy does a lot of running around in his job. then there's the to and from work for me, and doctors appointments, and shopping. saxy says we've put at least 100,000 miles on it in the last 2 years. add to this the other "truck" stuff it does -- carrying saxy's tools, taking smaller equipment and supplies to jobs, and so on. everything short of hauling.
but now, the jetta is hitting the too expensive to maintain territory. mcat only paid about $2000 for it -- $500 for any one repair job is a bit excessive. and it's definitely too expensive to take it in, be told we need to do one thing, and pay for something else entirely.
yes, the car is going back into the shop for the second time in 2 days. we were told the distributor needed repairs. did they repair that? no. they did something to get it back up and running, but didn't take care of the one thing they said we needed done. they said it was running, but running rough when saxy picked it up and paid the $500 for whatever job they did do.
rough apparently was too kind a word. it kept stalling, leaving the question: what did we (more accurately, mcat) pay $500 for?
regardless, the list of work that needs to be done -- distributor, temp gage, a half dozen other things -- are going to cost more than the car did. so far, mcat is of the mind to repair them, but it just seems it might be better to put that money into a new vehicle.
like the $3000 truck that was mentioned briefly to saxy the other day. a truck. a well taken care of truck that is being sold under value because the owner is moving. a truck that will manage saxy's job better than our poor jetta. a truck built to do these heavy transport/hauling jobs. and with room for 4 people to boot!
in the end, it's up to mcat. he'd take the jetta and sell if if he bought a new vehicle, but i'm sure he's looking at having to come up with a lump sum versus making smaller payments (even if those payments are aggravating). we asked saxy's folks if they could help, but they are having problems that are cutting badly into their finances right now so can't send even a couple hundred to help.
in the meantime, our jetta is on the road to junksville. it's sputtering along, getting pieced together as can, but the end is near. we all know it. even mcat has mentioned the car isn't going to make it much longer. if we could afford the insurance, we could fix it up and let me use it for work and whatnot while saxy used another vehicle. i could probably eke a little more use out of it than we can under the current conditions. unfortunately, we can barely afford to pay for the insurance on one vehicle. 2 is out of the question.
so, now, the car is on its way back to the mechanic -- where saxy will wait until they get it fixed and probably through any fight that ensues when mcat has to pay another $500. saxy's just hoping it won't stall out before he gets there.
no more zoom zoom. now it's just zoom.
word of the moment: creativity
imaginative ability: the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context