The next morning, the Golf started just fine, but the RV again took a couple cranks to turn over. It was raining, and the wipers were jumpy when I turned them on. I thought it was related to the fact that wipers didn’t seem to wipe well—I was actually glad that I might have found the solution, namely that the guys who did a little body work for us put them on too tight. As we drove the few blocks to the marina, three dummy lights came on on the dashboard. “This isn’t good,” I thought to myself. Once Liz parked the Golf, I told her to come check out the dashboard. I turned off the van to see if that would reset it, and it wouldn’t start. Battery #3: dead. We used the Golf to jump the van (we had just found the jumpers the night before), and decided to drive it to our local mechanic, who works on all foreign automobiles. We drove about 2 blocks when all the lights in the dashboard flickered in and out. We also realized the van wouldn’t shift out of first gear. More nervous than I’d been in a long time, I eased the van back down the hill to the marina. We called roadside assistance and told them we thought our alternator was bad and that we needed a tow. We put Rubi into the Golf and went back to the coffee shop in our old building to wait.
Three hours later, the tow truck finally came. The driver asked what the problem was. We told him, to which he replied, “You can’t jump a diesel with a car. You need to jump a diesel with a diesel.” He then used his Dodge RAM 4500 truck to charge our battery. We insisted he take the van for a drive before leaving. He agreed that something was funny, but suggested that he use his portable battery jumper to give it a nice jump and then that we drive to the repair place while he followed behind us.
Liz got into the van, I got into the Golf with Rubi, the tow truck driver got into his truck, and we started up the hill. At the same intersection where I freaked out, the van basically lost all power and stalled out. Liz was as freaked out as I had been. The tow truck driver had to then hitch up the van and we followed him to the mechanic. That was Wednesday afternoon, at about 4pm.
We left the van, both batteries dead, and headed to the La Quinta, which is dog friendly and about 3 blocks from one of the apartments we rented in Seattle. We just couldn’t seem to get out of town!
Rubi enjoyed the freedom, warmth, and dryness of the hotel room, as did we. We ordered some Chinese food and tried not to worry.
