NP: John Cage, 4'33"

The good news and the bad news are that yesterday on my way home from my soccer game, my car broke down.

The bad news is obvious. In over ten years with this car, I've never had any issues that immediately affected my ability to, you know, drive. No flat tires, no engine failures, nothing. So this was new territory for me. I was driving up Western Avenue, and suddenly there was a bang. It sounded like a tire blowing out, so I pulled over to the side of the road to check. No flat tire, so I got back in and started the car, at which point the godawful noise that followed the bang immediately resumed, and the "Check Engine" light started blinking furiously.

So I pulled over again a block further north, and checked the engine. It was still there. Not sure what else the furiously blinking light wanted me to check at that point.

It was at this precise moment that I realized my mechanic does not, in fact, have 24-hour towing service. Ultimately I had a friend come pick me up and remove the drum hardware from the back, and left the car down there to be retrieved this morning.

So what's the good news?

Well, I was way the hell out in Palos Heights on Friday night, driving back at 2 in the morning after a gig. I was in Bridgeview on Saturday for the Fire game. Had this happened during either of those trips, things would have been much, much more complicated.

What this is making me wonder, though, is if this wasn't a wear and tear thing, and that there was some residual charge to the jumper cables I had just let someone on the other soccer team use, which actually did blow a tire, but blew the spare tire in the well where I also keep said jumper cables, and that somehow did some damage to something important. If I have to buy a new car because I was being a nice guy, I'm going to be much less nice in the immediate future.