A perfect surprise break-down!

[faz]

Dropped the wife at work in the morning, then dropped the toddler at her daycare, and went to work. Tonight, went to pick up the toddler, needing to then go pick up the wife and go to airport to pick up mother in-law arriving from Canada. Cool... taxi dad in his trusty X5 to the rescue!

Parked the car at toddler's daycare, went in, picked her up, came out, put her in her child seat... start... click click click... nothing!.... click click click again, nothing. Dead battery, it sounds like... even though the dome lights are pretty bright looking and never had any signs of the battery heading south!

After a few tries... how the F#$% can this be a dead battery case, I am thinking... 4 year and 2 months old car... driven every day about 50 miles??? no lights left on by mistake.... come the F$@# on!

Called AAA who surprisingly showed up in 10 minutes, while my daughter was playing in the grass front yard of the closed day care... eat your heart out, east coast... this is the kind of weather we are paying dearly for in California!

The AAA phone lady had asked already what my problem was, and I said to I need a boost, I think. Somehow this AAA truck that shows up seems much smaller than I had seen before. The AAA dude says he could check my battery, I said go for it... he gets the spare wheel out, gets to the battery and tests it, a bad cell... 10.3 volts output... bad battery.

I had noticed the 'battery replacements' sign on the truck earlier....

- Do you have a battery for this?
- " yes we do... I have 40+ batteries in my truck"
- how much?
- "around $165 all said and done"
- go for it!

10 minutes later, a new battery in the car, he is running a test on alternator and stuff... his hand held unit says all is ok and no problems with alternator and what not... daughter is still happily watching her barney dvd in the costco self-battery-powered $150 DVD player...F@#$ the headrest $800 DVD screen units that rely on car's battery to operate... we are running ghetto self powered DVD player, baby!!!!!!

I am on my way to pick up the wife and her mom from the airport (wife got a ride to the airport from a friend meanwhile) with a new battery in less than half an hour.

I could NOT have asked for a better scenario to have the battery take a dump on me. This was probably the happiest $165 I spent on a battery, ever!