Pass or Fail

Keeping David’s car on the side of our garage has never been a big deal. He bought it when he was going to Skidmore College, and it made sense for him to have a car to travel back and forth to Hartford or to Montreal or wherever his wanderlust would take him on weekends and vacations. Now he lives and works in Washington, D.C., and he’s found that the city bus, the Metro and his bike actually are all he needs to get around. When he needs a car, he rents one. But you never know, or more precisely, he never knows when he might want his car again. Since we have the space to store it, and being nice parents, we’ve obliged. I keep it under cover except for once a month when I start it up and let the engine run for about 20 minutes. He doesn’t have to pay for expensive parking in D.C., and we’ve taken the insurance off the car since no one drives it.

Then last week, in the mail, came notice that his 2001 Volvo S-60 was due for its biannual emissions check. Julia dutifully called our insurance broker who was able to put the insurance back on for a couple days. I would made an appointment to bring it in for the emissions check, and during the day Julia decided it also would be good to drive it up and back to Enfield, about a 30 minute drive from our house each way, for an appointment she had. The acceleration on I-91 would be a nice change of pace for the car, she thought, as if it were a race horse that had done little more than chew hay in its barn for the last several months.

All went well, until a “check engine” light appeared on the dashboard. Then, another message appeared: “Check Emissions System.” I refused to take those warnings seriously. After all, we hadn’t done anything to the car. “They probably were set to come on now because the car is due for an emissions test,” I reasoned not very logically. When I stopped in at our local gas station to make an appointment for the emissions test the next morning, I told Chip about the dashboard messages that had flashed on. He shoot his head. “You better have it checked out. It won’t pass with those lights on.”

“Shit,” I thought. I drove the car to my Volvo mechanic and sure enough, he found a crack in the evaporator tube. Fixed by the end of the day, I called Chip back and scheduled an appointment for the next morning, and when morning after I presented him with my registration certificate, he matter-of-factly suggested I go get some coffee or breakfast and return in 15 or 20 minutes.

I walked to the shopping plaza next door and ordered an egg and cheese sandwich and coffee at the local Panera restaurant. Read some emails on my phone and returned in time to pick up the car. Only thing was the printout showed the car had failed the test!

“Have you had any work done on it recently?” Chip inquired.

“Yeh. Yesterday. We put in a new evap tube,” I said, proud I could talk mechanic jargon.

Except no one told me that afterwards, you need to drive the car for 100 to 200 miles so the systems will re-set.

“Shit,” I thought again. We only had the insurance on the car until the end of the day. Should I drive it up to Northampton and back? Down to New Haven and back? To New York? I could have it back in time for a re-test before the end of the day.

In the end, though, we called our insurance broker. Paid to extend the insurance for another month, and decided we’ll drive it around over the weekend, and bring it back next week. So it can sit safely by the side of our garage until David actually needs the car again. Maybe next year, he says. But who really knows.