Entry tags:
Oh, No, Not Again
Cheryl and I were invited up to The City for dinner this evening, and we had a fine time. Coming out of the Fremont BART station, however, I saw that I had once again left the minivan's lights on. The buzzer that sounds when you open the door with the lights on doesn't work, you see. Rats! I once again called AAA. At least this time (unlike the time this happened a couple months back at Union City), they knew the BART station existed. The operator said, "The instructions here say to go wait at the passenger pickup area" as she put through the service request. And so we went over there. We waited inside the station, mostly out of the wind, although it was certainly cold by local standards (37 F on the station thermometer). The BART station agent even let us come in through the side gate and use the restroom, which was kind of him.
After about half an hour, I got a call from an AAA dispatcher saying, "The driver is at your car and can't find you."
We started walking back out to the van and explained that we'd only been doing what the original call operator told us to do. The dispatcher said that he didn't know anything about that. Neither did the driver, when we told him the instructions. Sigh. I reckon that if we'd stayed with the van, he would have gone to the passenger pickup area instead.
Anyway, jump-starting the van took very little time, and we were on my way. I took the van out onto the freeway and ran up to Whipple Road and back -- about a 15-minute round-trip -- in order to pump some more power back into the battery. I hope it's enough to start it tomorrow, and I also hope that these two run-downs in two months haven't ruined the battery, which is only a couple of years old.
After about half an hour, I got a call from an AAA dispatcher saying, "The driver is at your car and can't find you."
We started walking back out to the van and explained that we'd only been doing what the original call operator told us to do. The dispatcher said that he didn't know anything about that. Neither did the driver, when we told him the instructions. Sigh. I reckon that if we'd stayed with the van, he would have gone to the passenger pickup area instead.
Anyway, jump-starting the van took very little time, and we were on my way. I took the van out onto the freeway and ran up to Whipple Road and back -- about a 15-minute round-trip -- in order to pump some more power back into the battery. I hope it's enough to start it tomorrow, and I also hope that these two run-downs in two months haven't ruined the battery, which is only a couple of years old.