Over the past few months I’ve been settling in to my new life here in Grand Forks, and so far I like it here a lot. There has been one major problem, though, and that’s my car.
For the past month and a half it’s given me a lot of trouble.
I’ve had the car for about three years and it’s by no means new, with 300,000 kilometres. But before I arrived in Grand Forks it had never really given me any trouble.
It all started on a trip to Castlegar, where a pothole, hidden by rain puddles and darkness, managed to rip the rubber right off of the rim. Luckily the people whose house I came to a halt in front of let me keep my car there for a few days.
With the help of my friends, I had it going by the next week but it did cause me to lose a few hours of the next Monday morning, to pull off tires in the mud where the car was parked.
By the next weekend my troubles were far behind and so I took a trip to Rossland. It was all going fine until my brakes became very weak. So weak that I had to drive very slowly on the highway to make it back, since I was close to home.
Alas though, I wouldn’t make it, because on a long straight, the transfer case on my all-wheel drive car suddenly seized up and with it the rear tires. Luckily because of the brake problem I wasn’t going that fast and had a nice time late at night, sitting on the open highway; then a nice tow back to town.
Getting this fixed set me back a couple more bucks and unfortunately my ride isn’t exactly in the best shape at the moment.
But what really set me back was the next week, when coming into Grand Forks on a Sunday night I hit a rock in the middle of the road which
somehow, I don’t know how, blew the same exact right side tires as the first time. So a late Christmas present to my old car was a set of new winter tires that in no way could I afford.
So hopefully my car will hold together at least for a few more years.
– Arne Petryshen is a reporter for the Grand Forks Gazette