Last Wednesday I got to ride in one of those cool yellow AAA tow-trucks. Again. I’m kind of used to swinging my nursing bag up into them now. And you get to see Marin from a whole different perspective up there. Plus there is the comforting sight of your car along for a jaunt on the back of the truck as you ride up front, sort of like a little car vacation.
My Jag had the good grace to fail on a quiet side-street. I came out from seeing a patient, and it wouldn’t start. It sounded to me like a battery issue, so I chose the Battery option on the AAA automated phone menu. Fifteen minutes later, Nicholas drove up in a dark blue Prius with pink breast cancer awareness logos all over it. He was a dude and he was not happy about having to save damsels in distress in a Prius. I compounded his insecurities by saying hey, I was expecting one of those big yellow trucks! But then he laughed and we fist bumped when I pointed out that at least his car started.
It was not a battery issue. Nicholas tested my charging system and it measured 10. Sounded quite good to me. I mean, it was 10, right? Nicholas shook his head. 14 is good. 10 is not good. The word alternator was mentioned. I don’t much like that word. He told me a story of how he jump-started a guy with a charging system number of 10 and the guy said it’s fine, I can drive it home, I just live a few blocks away! And then his car clapped out on the freeway. So Nicholas would not let me drive my car with its deficient charging system the one mile to my mechanics.
He called me a tow from one of his buddies. While I was waiting for the tow, I sat in my car in the sun and reflected on how much better it is to break down on a sunny day than a rainy one. I just hate standing around watching my car get strapped to a tow truck in the rain.
I swung myself up into the tow truck cab and I enjoyed the ride like I always somehow manage to do, even though the word alternator had been mentioned in my presence by a AAA employee and I was on my way to my mechanics who, although I seriously love and trust them, I only ever see when my car’s on the back of a truck.
My office has loaner cars. This is one of the many truly wonderful things about my job. All I had to do was arrange for my teen to pick me up at my mechanic’s and drive me to my workplace for me to pick up the loaner and go on to my next patient. I picked up the loaner car. The previous borrower had spilled disgusting substances innumerable on seats and console, and our loaner car person was terribly apologetic, but I was so pathetically grateful just to have a car that started - with working a/c - that I waved away her apologies.
The loaner was a Chevy. It took me a bit to figure this out because most compact cars look the same to me and I don’t own a TV so their logos fail the brand recognition test with me. I resolved not to park my Chevy in any big parking lot because I knew I would instantly lose it. One of the advantages of driving a Jaguar from the last millennium is that you can always find it in parking lots. Another advantage is that every time I come out of a patient’s house and see my car in the road, I get happy. Every time I sit into it, I get happy, except for the times I put the key in the ignition and turn it and nothing happens. You win some, you lose some.
It was the alternator. Plus I got my a/c fixed. The bill was $1100, but two days later I drove the unmemorable Chevy to my mechanic’s to swap it out for my Jag with its shiny new alternator. I was between patients and thought I was being marvelously efficient. My plan was to come back later in the day with my teen and together we would effect the loaner return. I sat into my Jag and felt the familiar happy. Home.
I performed a complicated parking maneuver so I could leave the loaner in the spot where my Jag had been. In so doing, I parked the Jag really poorly near a corner, because I was only leaving it there for a minute, right? Then I got back into it and it wouldn’t start. Plus it was sticking out in the road. But at least it wasn’t raining!
This time it was the fuel pump. Another $1100, what are the odds of that?! Tim, my mechanic, gave me a little talk about the state of my car. I could tell he felt really bad. The chassis was so badly rusted, he said, it really wasn’t worth fixing the fuel pump. Very bad luck to have them both go on the same day. It would have been so hugely wonderful to find out about this very bad luck before dropping $1100 on the alternator, but I guess that is the nature of bad luck.
There may be some folks out there who would quibble with the word luck. There may be some who might judge me for my great loyalty to old Jaguars. In fact I know there are, because they have told me repeatedly and in various ways over the years how stupid I am to drive these cars. And I hear what they are saying. But as with all love affairs, there are some very good reasons to ignore the good and well-meant advice of others. If you have ever been the driver of an old Jag, you will know exactly what I mean.
I am now on the road to purchasing an electric vehicle. I’m doing my second Climate Ride in July to raise awareness and money for climate action. Driving a gas guzzler becomes at some point too out of balance with my values and beliefs. An electric car will feel clean and right and I won’t have to spend any more time standing at fuel pumps watching my daughter’s college education disappear with the flickering numbers.
But this is a love song, a paean to the six old Jags I have been lucky enough to own. I have identified with these sleek and gorgeous vehicles for more than a decade, and been unendingly grateful for how protected I have always felt by their tanklike frames. When I skidded into a freeway onramp wall in March, I would probably have been injured had I been driving a hybrid. I’ve always loved the stretch of the Jag’s hood with the signature silver cat poised in its eternal leap. The slow pickup and the purring cruise, the walnut dash and leather seats and that distinctive Jaguar smell, they have felt safe and comforting to me. It is a deeply satisfying car to drive, and mine have all taken me on journeys innumerable and wondrous.
I’ll save money on gas and maintenance now, and I’ll be doing a better job of living my beliefs. I probably won’t be along for the ride in a tow truck again for a while. In a kitchen drawer, I have a silver cat that got knocked off one of my Jags. Maybe I’ll fix it to the puny hood of my Nissan Leaf or my Fiat 500e. That way I won’t spend too much time wandering hopelessly around large parking lots looking for my car.
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