my car key saga
Happy Sunday friends!
I own a functional & fun Volkswagen that is fast & the perfect size & I really enjoy driving it. My Volkswagen’s name is Victor. He is speedy & fun & has experienced many adventures & laughs & tears & horrible car singing. If you read my latest post, “It just takes a mindset shift,” you may recall that just last week I needed to have one of my tires replaced. I had all the car excitement that I needed already for the rest of the year.
Apparently, my busyness & forgetfulness has progressed to a whole new level. I came home late Thursday night juggling the usual backpack with laptop & textbooks, multiple lululemon bags with work items and changes of clothes, a coffee cup, a phone, & my car keys. Somehow, I must have set my car keys in a bizarre location as that was the last I saw of them. Don’t worry, the saga is just getting started.
On Friday, I headed out of town for a day adventure with some friends and rode in someone else’s car, having yet to notice the missing car key. Saturday morning I woke up too late to go for a run because I had stayed up too late doing homework the night before. I frantically rushed to get dressed, ready, & all the things for a day full of commitments & places to be. My sweet roommate noticed my rushing around & offered to make me coffee for the road. So sweet. I carried my many items out to Victor and opened the unlocked door. I vaguely thought it was weird that Victor was unlocked and figured my keys where in one of the numerous bags I was carrying & the car detected it. I have a stop/start button instead of a manual key ignition. I hit the button in a rush and set my armfulls of chaos down on the passenger seat so I could run back inside and grab my coffee & forgotten phone. The message, “key not in range” popped up on my dash. Bummer. I dug through my bags, knowing that if my keys was in my pocket or any of the bags the car would start. Running late already, I ran inside and thanked my roommate for the coffee and said I needed to grab my key from my room. But the key was nowhere to be found. My room. The kitchen. The laundry. Pockets from the clothes I had worn on Thursday. My roommates cars. Outside. Under the car. The fridge. We looked e v e r y w h e r e.
Then, I remembered I have a spare key! Marvelous! The day was saved! I dug through a box in my closet that I kept important car items & found the spare right away. Yay! I ran outside & hopped in the car with the spare & again, the ominous, “key not in range”. Wow defeated. Why wasn’t this key working? I figured it had to be out of battery as I had not used it in months. My roommate offered to drive me to the store to by new batteries. Of course, once at the store, I also had to buy a special tiny screwdriver to install the new battery. At this point, the challenge my forgetfulness had caused was over the top comical. Of course to finish off a crazy week, I needed to loose my car key. Too many giggles over the ridiculousness of this were experienced that morning. Finally, my fresh battery car key was ready to try. We got back home & still, very anticlimactically, the key d i d n o t w o r k. Well, I had exhausted the possibilities.
Finally, I called the family member I was meeting and said I was unable to come. I was committed to caring for my little brother and my uncle graciously offered to drive him to my house as I was stranded. My uncle showed up to my house with new apple airtags and teased saying that when I found my key, I am not allowed to loose it again. We took a search party break for the original key and I got some homework done. We looked all through the house & outside again. I called the dealership & they told me I needed to get my car towed, them pay $250 for a new car key fob in addition to a labor fee & programming charge. I started to feel frustrated. I called my regular car guy & we thought through some options, but he was convinced there was no way my car fob could become “unprogrammed”, even if it was not used for several months. I tried several suggestions and Youtubed every possible fix to connect my spare key to the car.
The weekend continued with a few cancelled plans & some use of my kind roommate’s cars. On Sunday night, I figured I would try the spare key one more time as a new busy week was starting & we had not found the original key. I had locked Victor, so I had to take apart the car handle to access the manual lock on the door. On Saturday, the car guy had suggested locking and unlocking the door manually & trying to start the car again. I had tried a few times & it had not worked. So strange. He thought Victor must be stuck in it’s “emergency” mode that locked the car and prevented it from starting. He thought the manual unlocking and locking would fix it. I got in the car on Sunday night to try this method again & again, “key not in range”. Finally, I held down the manual unlock & the ignition & the brake & voila! I guess it was the magic code. Victor started up happy to be running again!
Wow, I guess I just needed a little more pizazz thrown into my crazy days. I know I definitely needed the laughs & cancelled plans this mini saga brought. Well, off to a busy week WITH transportation. I have never been so thankful to drive.