blog.eliduke.com

For almost 6 months now, my little blog here has been completely void of new content. After my time in Antarctica (and the subsequent traveling that followed), I decided to take a break from blogging and focus my attention toward Twitter. It seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time because I would be in a much better place to post to twitter than to this blog. I had really only planned on taking about 3 months off, but it was just so much easier to post to twitter.

Every time something crazy or “blog-worthy” would happen to me, I could usually find a way to post that to twitter. And once it was posted to twitter, what was the point of blogging about it? Well, something happened to me yesterday that wasn’t succinct enough for twitter. After it happened I took my usual course of action, running it around it my head, imagining it fitting into 140 characters. It just wasn’t possible. So, I decided that it was the perfect jump start to get be back into blogging.

Here goes…

Yesterday I took Jubie (Olivia [the girl I'm staying with in Denver] ‘s roommate) to the airport. Well, actually, I drove her car home from the airport. Or, at least, that was the plan.

Jubie drove to the airport while I sat shotgun. When we got there, she parked the car on the curb in the departures area and took the key out of the ignition so she could unlock the trunk. She grabbed her stuff, gave me the key, and disappeared into the airport.

I hopped back in the car, put the key in the ignition, but nothing happened when I turned the key. Well, some things happened, but “the car starting” was not one of them. A few indicator lights came on, the air-conditioning paused momentarily, and a strange clicking came from the gear box (it was an automatic). I tried everything I could to get this car started: I put it in neutral, I put it in park, I put my foot on the brake, I put on my seat-belt, I locked the doors, I turned off the air-conditioning, I pushed the key in harder while turning it, etc. I tried all of those things in different combinations, probably turning the key about 25 times, but nothing was working.

I pulled the key out of the ignition, got out of the car, and called Cary (the bassist, also staying at Olivia’s) to see if he had Jubie’s cell phone number. He didn’t, but he called Olivia who then called me. First, she asked me if the car was in park. Then, as she was about to tell me something more, an airport traffic police officer walked up, being very pushy. He told me that I had to move the car immediately, and I told him that I was on the phone with someone trying to figure out how to get it started. He then pulled out his radio and started calling for a tow truck. I told him to give me 5 seconds, but he wouldn’t listen. I went back to Olivia on the phone, told her that the car was about to get towed, and she said that she would call Jubie and get her to come back out and help me.

As soon as I hung up with Olivia, the police officer was at it again. He asked me if the car started or not. I said that it did when we drove here, but now it wasn’t. He asked me to try starting it again. I opened the door, sat down in the driver’s seat with my right leg on the break and my left leg out the door, put the key in the ignition, and turned it.

The car started.

On my drive home I realized that this phenomenon is not unfamiliar to most people. In fact, just the other day, while Robin was showing me how her computer wouldn’t connect to the wireless internet at her parents house she said, “If this thing starts working now, I’m actually going to be upset.”

So, what is this phenomenon? Does it have a name? These questions are NOT rhetorical.