After a great dinner at Port of Call on Friday night, I got into my car to leave and my car didn’t start. Nothing was left on, but the battery just refused to do much of anything. Not the best start for the weekend. I actually left my car there for the night because no one had a jumper cable.

Christian was nice enough to drive me out to my car the next morning to get it jumped. It started with no problem, so we decided to drive to Sam’s Club to get a new battery and to stock up on other bulk goodies. It was an exceptionally hot weekend in New Orleans (and as I’ve heard, the rest of the US too), so I had my A/C on and I was listening to the radio. My lights were also on, having just driven through a patch of rain.

While waiting in the left turn lane to get into the Sam’s parking lot on Airline Highway, my car stalled. I was about 4 cars back in line and there was a line of cars behind me. Of course, I couldn’t start my car again and there wasn’t any power to even turn on emergency lights. I called Christian, who was two cars in front of me. As the light changed, he made a U-turn to get back to me and I tried to signal to the cars behind me to go around — no one was very happy.

Quickly, we decided that there wasn’t enough room to easily jump my car again, so we decide that our new goal was the AutoZone on the other side of the street. Christian pushed my car bumper to bumper as we attempted to cross 3 lanes of the highway. This was one of the scariest moments of my life because I had no way to signal or honk my horn. My car, without power steering, is in neutral, being pushed by someone else. We moved from lane to lane thinking that each car was going to smash into me. It was amazing to see the other drivers faces. Each driver was at first angry that I was moving into their lane slowly and making them stop and miss the light. Then, they were surprised by the fact that I was being pushed by another car. Finally, I think that they were embarrassed for me. I guess it helped that I was visibly thanking them and waiving as my car was pushed into the AutoZone parking lot.

After lots of grease, turning of screws, and lifting of heaving batteries, my car was finally back to working order. The two morals of the story are to change your car battery when your dealership tells you it is getting old (told me that right before Katrina) and when driving a car to replace a battery, it’s a good idea to leave your A/C and radio off. Although I think that the use of lights and wipers were probably necessary. Hopefully that won’t ever happen again.