Adventures with a skippy car.

Those of you who were laughing at me as I pulled out of the Church parking lot on Sunday will enjoy this story. As you may know, my car recently developed an exhaust problem. As with all exhaust problems I first noticed that it sounded a little bit louder than normal. But I decided to wait for it to get worse before I bothered to fix it.

It started to get louder - but still I waited.

It got to the point where it was really loud when I was accelerating but not too bad if the car was merely maintaining speed or coasting. So I waited for it to get worse.

One day I made the mistake of accelerating as I was driving past a cop. He pulled me over and told me to get it fixed. I told him I was planning to get it fixed that weekend. And I was. Honest. But it was cold that weekend, and the football playoffs were on, and I just didn't have time. So I waited some more.

Ever since then, I just made sure I did not accelerate as I passed that cop and everything was fine. Then this weekend, I noticed that it was worse. It was loud all the time - and there was a distinct rattling when I would go over bumps. When I looked at the back of the car, the tailpipe was definitely in an odd position. The kids in my back seat asked me why their voices sounded funny when they talked. But still I waited.

Then on Tuesday, it finally got worse. I was driving down I-95 when I hit a bump in the road. There was a bang and a rattle and then the distinct metallic sound of metal being dragged on asphalt. Crap. I decided it would be a bad thing to leave a muffler in the middle of a highway like I did with the playpen incident so I pulled into the slow lane and waited until I had a good opportunity to pull off the road. The day before I watched a special report on TV about people on the side of highways getting hit by traffic, so I wasn't about to just pull on to the shoulder. I was about 2 miles from the Hampton tolls and I knew there would be a little parking area right there. How much worse could it get in two miles, right?

So anyway, there I am cruising down 95 dragging a muffler and it starts making a worse sound - it now sounds like it is bouncing up and down between the road and my undercarriage. I am positive by now that this means my muffler is hanging by a string and any moment now is going to go flying into the car behind me (who, by the way, was tailgating) Desperate to avoid this, I reduced my speed drastically. This only serves to cause the car behind me to start tailgating me even closer. (By the way, how stupid are you - if the car in front of you is dragging/bouncing a piece of metal exhust, and it is clear that it could let loose any moment, wouldn't it be a good idea to BACK OFF? Or for that matter, go around! It's a four-lane freakin' highway!!!!)

As I approached the toll booth, I started to breath a sigh of relief. I was only a couple of hundred yards away from the little parking lot where I could pull over and fix it. (well, "fix" may not be the right word). But then - just as I'm about to go through the tollbooth, I hit a bump. The front edge of my muffler caught the lip of that bump and stood up almost vertical, LIFTING THE BACK END OF MY CAR OFF THE GROUND!!! Then it started making the most horrific sound you can imagine - so loud it completely drowned out my Radio. The whole time the guy at the tollbooth is giving me really strange looks. I was able to get the car over to the parking lot fearing the worst. When I got out I found that my muffler was completely wedged vertical between the bumper and the ground, with the muffler supporting a great deal of the car's weight. That awful sound was the sound of me gouging a pretty nice little "scratch" into the pavement. It was wedged so tight that I started getting out the car jack in order to lift the car up and free the muffler. But then I realized there was so much junk in my trunk that it would take way too long, so I just started kicking the muffler. After a few really good kicks, I finally knocked it loose - along with a fair amount of paint from my bumper. I was able to completely remove the muffler and put it in my trunk.

I guess that NOW it is finally bad enough to fix. A cop will usually let you off the hook with a warning for the broken exhaust, but I don't think they will be quite as understanding if they find out the muffler has been completely removed.