Dory: "Good feeling gone."

Two in one day!? What's the world coming to? Not much. At least, in the Jeep world.

What's that, you say? "Jeeps are awesome." "I love your Jeep." And from the South African peanut gallery, "Wearing Jeep clothing is so cool." Well, I'm here to tell you that Jeep is no longer awesome. When I was a kid and we two Cherokees, teal and red, it was awesome. Especially when dad managed to flip it on it's side with 3 foot snowbanks on the driveway. To my six-year old mind, that was epic.

In the words of Dory, "good feeling gone". Last night it took Ian and I half an hour to get home because the car could only handle second gear and went from worthy of concern for getting to the city for work to serious doubts about making it home at all. It went like this after the first eight miles:

"Eeee! We're rolling, I have serious doubts about this hill. There's no way to our house without a hill. What if it just starts rolling backwards?" (And in my head, 'Oh, shit. If it stalls, we could die. It could roll backwards, tumble into the dark marsh and we could die. How will I pay for a new transmission? What is the transmission exactly?')

Ian: We're going to make it. [Enter first gear and 5000+rpms]

"Okay, first gear. Come on, baby, COME ON. COME ON."

[Explosive excitement and cheering at the crest of the hill].

"WE MADE IT!"

[We slowly roll past a driveway with a box spring. A mile from our house.]

"If it dies here, we have a bed for the night. Or rather, a boxspring. Actually, you'd get the boxspring. I have a sleeping bag and slept like a rock in here the other day."

In the end, we made it the whole way by some miracle. To add to the spice of life, I got up a little early this morning to borrow my dad's fancy convertible to get to work and the battery was dead. So I coaxed my useless vehicle as far as it could muster (a whopping seven feet) and jumped my dad's little car to life before making it just as class began.