L'interrupteur lumineux

C'est l'année de bonheur.

It is also the year that started with car trouble.

Ma voiture, elle est un sucré bébé.

There is, under the car hood, hidden in a mass of hoses, wires, metal contraptions and illegible labels, a device called the starter.

Sans le starter, la voiture ne démarre pas.

So, on a groggy New Year's Day afternoon, my wife and I had our little sweetcakes towed from the Holiday Inn carpark to the local Toyota dealership whereupon, on Monday, we were informed the Camry's starter had stopped starting the stopped car.

"Fix it!" we exclaimed, satisfied that the repair cost of $470 was trifling compared to having no personal transportation (i.e., one with an automatic transmission).

Ne pas rouler pneus de votre voiture dans un fossé humide et boueux.

But wait, that's not all!

We normally park our Camry inside the garage.  To get the Camry from the garage to the street, the driver must put the transmission gears in reverse, back up the car until the rear tires just go off the edge of the driveway, put the car in drive, turn the steering wheel sharply, slowly roll the rear tires back up on the driveway (because the Camry has front-wheel drive) and then accelerate down the driveway to the street.

Let's say, for instance, that the Camry sits in the dealership's smash repair and body shop (no, not that kind of body shop).

Hey, honey, look!  The garage is empty so I'll park our BMW in there, instead.

And, although the BMW has rear-wheel drive, I'll follow the same procedure for backing the car out of the garage as the Camry.

Oops!

Rear wheels don't get good traction in piles of wet leaves raked off the side of the driveway to cover a muddy ditch.

Mon petit bouledogue, la 325i, elle laisse tomber son arrière-end dans la boue.

After propping sticks of woods, small boulders, cat litter and carpet under the tires for traction, doing no good, - in fact, burying the tires deeper in mud - we gave in to the gods of ditched vehicles and called our roadside emergency service rep, Hannah at AAA, who connected us with Travis the towtruck guy, who, well...

You guys and gals out there who consider yourselves offroad experts.  How do you get your 4x2 out of a ditch IF you don't have a winch on the front?

Well, Travis thought the same thing I did.  Rev the car back and forth and it'll spin out of the wet leaves and mud.

Wrong!

So Travis hooked the towtruck's winch to the back of the Bimmer and pulled her out unceremoniously but unscratched.

Mon bébé, elle n'est pas gênée, elle est humiliée.

I tell you this straightforward tale as a cautionary one - do not practice the same techniques with a rear-wheel drive car as with a front-wheel drive one.

My sweet little BMW, mud in the wheelwells, sits at the top of the driveway guarding the house as she always has, like a bulldog crouched to attack without warning, forever wary of wet leaves and mud making contact with her rear treads.

Morale de le conte: Il est préférable qu'une personne conduit une voiture dans un fossé, que d'avoir un bouledogue qui ne sera pas mouillé les pieds.