the solution

There's an Enterprise Rent-A-Car center just 3.2 miles out from my house, and the roads along that stretch are walkable, so here's the plan: since my car is in the shop and won't be ready until after 1PM on Monday (which is too late for me to be ale to drive to my 1:30PM Monday staff meeting), I'm going to walk up to the rental place, rent the car for a day, drive over to the auto shop, check up on when the car will be ready (probably later in the day, when I can't do anything about it), drive back to my place in the rental, wash, change, and go work, drive back to Enterprise at night, top off the rental's gas tank, drop the car off, walk home, then walk back out on Tuesday morning to pick up my own car. That'll be 9.6 miles in two days-- a decent workout for someone who hasn't walked (or even exercised) that much in a while. My thanks to Dr. Steve for his generous loan to help me out with expenses.

Ah, yes: the car dude noted that he still wasn't sure whether the problem actually was a VTEC solenoid. "It could just be a wire," he said. Here's hoping.

UPDATE: Slight change in plans: I'll be dropping the rental off at Enterprise on Tuesday morning, because they're not allowing drop-offs the night before. Works for me: I'll have to walk only a short stretch from Enterprise to the auto shop to pick up the car that day. Instead of 9.6 miles of walking, it'll be closer to 6.8 miles.


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