Battery Death

We live in a day and age where pretty much everything we do is run through computers.

Yesterday morning, I had an appointment and got in my VW SUV and the battery didn’t have enough juice to start it. Luckily, we have two vehicles so I was able to make my appointment. I figured I would deal with the dead battery later.

I’d been forewarned by the guy at Lube Central who changed my oil the other day that he had trouble with the battery, and had to jump it to get it going, a problem I never had. He suggested that I check it out, but it worked fine for me until it didn’t. Like yesterday.

So I called AAA for help, or actually first thing I did was follow the advice of my phone and downloaded the AAA app. That took me to roadside assistance, sort of.

The app started the process then suggested that I could buy a new battery from AAA, which I figured would save me from having to drive anywhere. There was a storm coming and I wanted to be safe at home.

So after looking at their list of batteries, I chose one, but it wouldn’t let me just go back and tell them about what I wanted.

I had to restart the app, and eventually, I got Buddy’s Towing on the line. I told them where I was and that I wanted to buy a battery. The guy said, ‘Well we used to do that, but we don’t anymore because we didn’t meet a quota” or something like that.

So he recommended that I call Pacific Towing out of Eureka, where they do battery sales. He gave me their number and I called them, and the guy there took a long time looking at their batteries, and eventually said he didn’t have the right one. He couldn’t help me. He had to hand my problem back to Buddy’s.

And he warned me that I would probably have to go back through the AAA system to get somebody out here, even though the Buddy’s guy was almost here a couple of minutes before.

And he was right. I actually called Buddy’s dispatcher and talked to him, he said sorry,  he couldn’t help me, I had to go through the AAA computer system again.

So I recalled the AAA number and jumped through hoops to work myself into the system again, without any human involvement, gave them my 14 digit membership number and then, what seemed to be an operator (or maybe another computer) a woman asked if I was in a safe place. I said “yes” and she asked me the same thing again. I said “yes” again and she said, “I’m not connected and you are not answering” and hung up on me or just disappeared.

So I started over again jumped through hoops, went through entering my 14 digit number again finally got to an operator in Arizona somewhere, and explained what happened with their faulty system. She apologized and said that they always have trouble before she put me on “priority” since they messed up. And she said she would hook me up with Buddy’s, again.

Not long after that I got a call from another different Buddy’s driver who promised he’d be out soon. Why does this have to be so difficult? Computers are supposed to make life easier but just don’t.

At any rate, once JC from Buddy’s showed up we made short work of jumping the VW, and he suggested that I keep it running to charge, and I told him I was going to drive to O’Reilly’s Auto Zone. And when he was gone I headed north.

At that point there were no further apps or talking to anyone or anything. I drove out to McKinleyville, and a guy named Goat checked out my battery, confirmed that it was dead, and sold me a new one with a three year warranty, and once again I was on the road again.

But first I took a couple of minutes shooting pictures of a pair of crows that were cawing at each other overhead. The wind was coming up and there was clearly a storm brewing. Maybe that’s what they were discussing although it was hard to say.

And when they flew off, I figured it was time for me to see if I could beat the rain home. Home again, home again, jigity jig.