Not An Egg Carton

Ok, Noodle Fans, here's that broken car story I promised you all about eight thousand years ago.
So, my car is cute and runs all right... it's a little 2000 Honda Civic EX, and it's all mine. Mostly good enough for me, I'd say. It's not perfect though, evidenced by semi-frequent discouraging internal noises and the occasional breakdown/repair cycle. But for the most part, it's a good little car, and I don't have too many problems with it.

For the last couple of months though, I'd been hearing this noise... you know, another one of those discouraging ones. It sounded like a cross between a jingling and a grinding... similar to what my parents' horrific old washing machine sounded like every time it started on the spin cycle. But the noise didn't happen that often-- maybe once every couple of weeks or so and only for a second or two at a time, so I never thought it was too big of a deal. I even tried to have my parents witness the noise, but every time they got into the car, it behaved perfectly. Oh well. Not terrible, right? Wrong.

Apparently the whole time I was driving the car around, it was breaking more and more a little bit at a time, so slowly that I didn't even notice that anything was really wrong until the one fateful Saturday morning when all hell broke loose.

Ok, well maybe all hell didn't break loose, but the part shown here did:
(My broken brush guard from inside and outside views)

So I was driving to my last K(r)aplan class early on a Saturday morning and all of a sudden that terrible grinding/jingling noise happened. Now, I was on the highway driving about 70mph, so as soon as I could, I got over to the right lane, put on my flashers, and slowed down. 50mph wasn't slow enough-- the car still was making the noise, so I got it down to about 35mph and prayed that my exit was near. There was no shoulder, so I couldn't pull over, but before too long, my exit came up and I got off the highway. I tried pulling off onto the shoulder of the exit ramp, but it was kind of banked and the angling seemed to make the noise worse. So I reluctantly pulled back onto the road and turned onto the first side-street I came to.

When I pulled over, I got out of the car, leaving the motor running and the flashers flashing. I looked all around to see if anything was on fire, and feeling quite certain that nothing was going to blow up, I crouched down on the ground to check out the undercarriage. Lo and behold, was my brush guard, hanging by a thread, and dragging against the ground. So all those little noises for the past few weeks had apparently been the bolts holding the part up coming off. The piece itself is kind of rusted out and must have been slowly unhinging all that time.

So, I'm realizing all of this while laying on the ground staring at the underside of my car, I'm almost late for my class, wondering if I should just call for a tow-truck, and just kind of spacing out at the poor timing of it all, when this little old Italian man comes walking by on the sidewalk. The following is a real conversation that took place:

Man:Did you break down?
Me: Yeah-- my car's making a noise.
Man: Oh, can you see something down there under it?
Me: Yeah. Something's hanging. I don't know what it is.
Man: (Getting down to the ground on his hands and knees) Oh yeah, there is something hanging down there. Wait-- it looks like an egg carton. You're dragging an egg carton.
Me: No, I don't think it's an egg carton. It's metal. I think it's a piece of my car.
Man: Yeah-- that there is an egg carton. Hmmmm. Maybe we can knock it away.

At this point, I get a big stick from the lawn near where I'm parked. And, thinking in advance, decide to turn the car off before trying to knock anything out from underneath it. So I went back to where the man was laying, and shoved the stick at the hanging metal piece to no avail. The man takes it from me and, after giving it a few healthy whacks, the piece falls to the ground. I take the stick from him and drag the part out from under the car. After testing to see if it's cool enough to touch, I pick it up and turn it round and round in my hands.

Man: Oh, I guess that's not an egg carton after all. What type of car is this?
Me: It's a Honda Civic.
Man: Oh, I have no idea what that piece is, but it's probably not really important if your car can run with it hanging off like that. Oh well, good luck.

So I thanked him and he walked away, leaving me with a rusted out metal car part in my hands, not knowing quite what to do. I got back in the car, chucked the piece onto the back seat, and drove away. The car handled fine-- the noise was gone, and I didn't feel any pulling or smell any smoke, so I continued on to my class. Later that week, my parents took my car into the shop for me and the guys there said I didn't need it after all, and that it was only a protective measure for if I was going to be parking the car in thick brush.

Sheesh.

All that for something that didn't really matter. Oh well, I guess all's well that ends well. The car's running ok now. It hasn't made any strange noises in at least a month, and I now have an excuse not to take that tropical safari trip in my little Civic my friends have been bugging me for. Because I mean, come on, we wouldn't want any more tropical rain forests to burn down now, would we?