csammisrun

Two days ago I left Kansas City heading for Ames in a ‘94 Mercury Sable. Yesterday I returned in an ‘88 Mazda 323. That was my weekend in a nutshell.

Oh, details?

Ten miles away from Ames, the Sable’s transmission had a catastrophic failure while heading up I-35. It happened fast; I felt some unexpected feedback in the accelerator, heard a grinding noise, and the car slipped into 2nd gear. Fortunately this happened right by the Huxley exit, so I just turned onto the ramp and limped to a gas station in the town. That was the last time that the Sable moved under its own power. Burning transmission fluid and a rather unfortunate amount of heat coming off the drive train, along with a hideous grinding when moving the gear selector, signaled the final breakdown of that magnificent beast.

This, by the way, brings to light a couple of things about the Sable’s attitude. First off, it apparently hates Ames since I moved to Kansas City. Last time I came up, it wouldn’t start after it got to the student commuter lot (spark plugs); this time, the transmission cooked itself. Second off, it also hates new tires. When the transmission died last November and had to be rebuilt, I’d just had two new tires put on the rear. A couple weeks ago, I had new tires put on the front. Coincidence?

I called Russ, who gave me a lift into Ames. John, Gaila, Greg, and a coworker of John’s had lunch at Bali Satay, where they still remember my order (pork lo mein and a Coke). Afterwards, Greg and I wandered around campus for a while, visiting the CS department and the sysadmin of Animal Science, whom Greg worked for for a summer and I worked with when I was the server administrator for the ag college. That evening I hung out with Russ and his friends, until around 11ish, at which point we drove to Huxley and we towed the Sable to the junkyard in Ames. The next day, I sold the car to the junkyard for $0.05/lb on the title weight, around 3200lbs.

Later that day, I bought the Mazda 323 from a friend of Russ’s. It’s a 4-speed manual, which is currently making my life very interesting, as until yesterday I did not know how to drive stick. Russ and Brandon, the guy who previously owned the car, taught me how to drive it in a gravel lot. The crash course worked well enough to get me out of Ames and back to Overland Park, and later tonight I’m going to go teach myself how to start on hills. Gooood times.

http://csammisrun.net/images/cars/ - all but one of these are pictures of the Mazda sitting in my apartment’s parking lot. The first picture is of the Sable’s final odometer reading: just shy of 200,000. Oh well, the Mazda has 206K, I got to over the 200K mark one way or another