car window

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I had this 8x12 foot carpet in my car and I'm driving up to deliver it to S's church. I decide it's hot so I roll down the driver-side and passenger-side front windows. After a few minutes, I decide I can't hear the radio, so I'd do A/C instead. I roll up the driver-side front window without any problems, but the passenger-side front window just makes clicking noises--it doesn't go up. Ah well, I think to myself--I'll look at it when I'm not driving.

I get off the highway and pull into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. I have ... I think you'd call it automatic windows--they're electrically powered--so I leave the key in the ignition so I can power the window up and down. I wander over to the passenger-side front window, open the door, try the button, hear the clicky noises, and then stick my fingers into the door and pull the window up manually. That works out well and the window has enough friction to stay up as long as I don't touch the up/down button.

Smiling, I shut the door. Then I wander over to the driver-side to get my key out of the ignition and discover... that my car has locked itself!

So there I am in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot with my keys in the ignition and my car locked. I feel really foolish now--a radical contrast to the incredibly smart feeling I was just feeling after doing something incredibly smart. Then it occurs to me that my window is broken so I wander back to the passenger-side, manually pull down the window, grab my keys from the inside, stick my fingers in the door and pull the window back up again.

Then I decided to try a local mechanic rather than the VW dealership in Brighton who, while they have free coffee and they seem very nice, tends to be expensive and far away and irritating to schedule appointments with. I looked at the CarTalk web-site and found a mechanic a mile and a half from me, called them up, and had the window fixed the next day. I thought they added the total up wrong because it was impossibly low--but it turns out that was the price.

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