Dead Battery

The day started off as usual. Woke up at 5 am, did my morning gongyo, drank my shake & left the house at 6.10 am. Unlocked the car, toss my bag onto the passenger seat, settled in, key in ignition, crank, nothing but clicking sounds. Repeat several times, gave up. I gave work place a call & was told to take personal leave for today. Later in the day, D&J came & jump start my car for me. He found that the negative cable was loose & told me that was probably why the battery wasn't charging. As advised, I left the engine running for a while & even took Ton Ton for a spin.

When hubs came back, I was doing my daimoku. I wasn't done till 4.35 pm. I thought I would try starting my car again just to make sure it's working. Luckily I did coz it wasn't. The clicking noises were not even present, just nothing. We tried to jump start mine with hub's car but the cable he had was too short. With the battery totally flat now, I couldn't put the car in neutral to reverse it manually so he could reach it. It wasn't safe anyway coz the cable was missing the rubber handles as well & threw off sparks. It was getting late & I told him that we'll just drive down to the auto shop in his car or they're going to close. We got there at 5.15 pm, 15 minutes to go before they close for the day.

I went straight up to the cashier & asked for assistance. The battery costs me $155, plus a new jump start cable for $30. Changing the battery looked easy enough. I think I'll be able to do it myself if there's a next time. Hubs called this the moment of truth. I cranked the engine & with pleasure hear it roar to life. Still, I better wake up even earlier to check again before hubs leave for work at 4.50 am. That way, at least I still can jump start my car if needed & leave for work earlier. Then I'll worry about getting home later.

There's a sequence (for safety), be it attaching cables to the new battery or attaching the jump start cable. This was told to us by the cashier who served us. Hubs remembers it as NPPN. Negative off, positive off. Positive on, negative on. So positive cable is always the 1st to go on & the last to come off.