It’s never fun to have car trouble. Especially when you have to commute 130 miles, five days a week. So it was no fun at all when I got in my car at about 4:00 in the morning and the damned thing wouldn’t turn over. The lights all worked, the battery was only two weeks old, but I heard nothing but a hum of current when I turned the key in the ignition.

I had thought this problem was licked two weeks ago when I bought the new battery. I’d been temporarily stranded three previous times by the same problem. In those cases, the car either decided to play nice later on and started, or I had to jump-start it. A new battery seemed in order, since I was on a six-year old batter from the factory. The car started flawlessly for two weeks after I put the new battery in.

Until Wednesday, when it absolutely would not start without a jump. I decided that enough was enough, that I was probably dealing with a bad alternator, and called in to work that I wasn’t coming in because I had to get my car fixed. I learned the lesson of procrastination a few months ago, so off I went to my mechanic of choice, fully prepared to cut him a check for a few hundred dollars.

Except that he didn’t want it; couldn’t take it. The fucking thing started up for him as reliably as one might wish. He checked the battery, alternator, cabling, the whole nine yards, and, try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a reason to start siphoning money out of my wallet. Then he dropped the bomb: “You should probably take this to the dealer to have them run their diagnostics on it.“.

I drooped visibly at these words. The dealer. Damn it. Dealers charge you 50 bucks just for driving past their lot. God help you if you actually have to drive your car into that den of sharks for actual service. I figured I had little choice at this point, though, since my mechanic had tried his best—and failed—to find a point of entry into my bank account. I got my car back and called the dealer, who told me they couldn’t see my car until the next morning.

Crap. Two days working from home, in a row. While this might sound like a good thing, it isn’t. Not for me. I don’t like it much. Not only am I easily distracted by all my toys, but there’s household chores, some more neglected than others, that need doing, errands I can run, objects and structures to fix. If the kids are home (and, thankfully, they weren’t), it’s Game Over before you even start. The fact that the boss isn’t a fan of days off means that I also start worrying that when I do show up, all my stuff will be handed to me in a big box along with my final paycheck.

So the next morning I take the car in to the dealer. To their credit, they started work on it quickly, and actually called me back a few hours later to give me an update. Unfortunately, the update was that they couldn’t find a thing wrong with it, either, except for a cracked engine belt that didn’t have anything to do with the starter motor. They asked me lots of hopeful questions about symptoms and noises, none of which I had encountered. They promised to keep trying, and even put another technician on it.

A couple hours later, the dealer called back with nothing to report. He was obviously ready for me to erupt into some tirade because they’d failed to find the problem, much less eliminate it, but I understood. You don’t work with technology, in hardware or software, without encountering the dreaded Irreproducible Problem a few dozen times (before lunch).

So now I’m out a couple hundred dollars, my boss is doubtless annoyed, and the problem has gotta still be there. It’s only a matter of time before it leaves me stranded someplace nasty at the worst possible time. At least this time I have gas money. What I find interesting is that I never had any of these problems whem I was driving my gas-hoggin’ light SUV. Now that I’m driving a responsible little Toyota Echo, I’m getting hammered.

No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.