37.4 KM off the Elite Highway

37.4 km off the ELITE highway to KLIA. I won't forget that point of the highway any time soon. That's one of the many thoughts as I rode back to my home in front of a tow truck with my mom's car being towed at the back.

Somehow things always go wrong for my mom's car at the worst possible times. It's an 11 year old C180 Merc. It's been with us since Labuan around 1994-1995 before we moved up to KL.

I remember the time where it was our turn to pick up the Taman Desa gang (a bunch of us lived in Taman Desa and carpooled to school occasionaly) and that day, we were headed to school for our SPM examinations. My mom was driving and that was the year where the merc's air con was acting up. It was practically a sauna in the car with me, Wei Xian and Tracy (I think there was possibly one more person) in the car and remember what a dilemma it was. Sweat in out in the air-conless car or wind down windows and shorten our lifespans by breathing in the lovely air spewed out by the numerous buses surrounding us. (Our school was right smack in the city near Puduraya)

And that time Jess came down to visit KL and I remember driving her around in what she fondly recalls as 'the kinetic powered car'. You see, you had to drive really fast to get the air con going. We later fixed it discovering that some leaves had gotten clogged in the system and got it fixed.

I remember another time when I was driving with Terence and we just had picked up Sarah and Jessica from Midvalley and we were on our way to Bangsar for Chinese New Year visiting. Suddenly, one of the lights lit up and Terence, being my co-driver got the manual out of the glovebox and we discovered we were low on coolant! We had to pop by the Bangsar Petronas for a quick fill up on coolant. The pump attendant knew what he was doing and gave us a quick fill up on coolant. I remember apologizing to the girls saying somewhere along the lines," Sorry, ladies... your knights in shining armour are having some technical problems with our mechanical steed."
Thankfully, the car didn't have any further problems and we managed to carry on with our annual ang pau collections.

But! That wasn't the end of the 'coolant saga'. My mom and I had to go for a refill the coolant once again but we later discovered a leakage and had to get it fixed.

Fast forward to the 18th of July, 2006. I was supposed to go pick up Liza from Midvalley at 2030 hours and proceed to reunite her with Seng at 2145 at KLIA and return home where they're be spending the night at my house before they move on to Terengganu, Liza's homestate the next day. (where Seng was to meet her parents and family.. but that's his story. Lol)

So that was the plan. But as you probably already can tell, Murphy's law did me in.

I started the car about to leave for Midvalley and the accursed light lit up again! Gah! My dad was kind enough to take his car and pick up Liza with me. We decided in the car that I'll get coolant before heading to KLIA.

So we picked up Liza and reached home. Dropped off her bags. Got into the Merc. Drove to the Taman Desa Shell. And... They didn't sell coolant! WTH!

Nevermind, I thought. We'll try Old Klang Road Shell. Eureka! They had coolant! I passed the coolant bottle to the pump attendant and ended up doing most of the work ourselves. WTH! He was even asking me,' Cukup air kah?' Then the two of us would look at the bottle's directions and go, ' Sikit lagi.. ah! Cukup! Cukup!'

So we got in the car and I called my parents saying everything should be okay. They warned me to come back and my dad would drive us instead in his car but I said it's be alright. So we set off for KLIA. Passed the toll booth. The engine temperature was doing fine.

Then, it happened. After we passed the Nilai KLIA exit, there were wierd noises. Like something caught in between the fan. I didn't want to risk it so I pulled over. Both of us checked the car.. The tyres were alright. Then I saw like leakage. (actually It was just the air-con apparently but I didn't know at this point of time =.=) So, I decided against driving on and there we were.

My mom's car broken down in the middle of the ELITE highway. Surrounded by palm trees. at 10pm at night. Me stranded with my good friend's girlfriend. (Not that I tried anything, btw)

If you thought thing's couldn't get worse.. I made a call to AAM. They asked for my membership no before they would send assistance. I had to call my dad for that and my handphone's battery was running out. Thank God Liza had spare Nokia phone batteries right then. Lesson learnt here: ALWAYS, ALWAYS keep your phone charged!

Called AAM and they had to send one of their panel members from Nilai because we were out of their range. My dad was also going to come to our rescue. We were also frantically trying to get a hold of Seng to tell him our situation and to get him to take the coach back to KL sentral.

Then, the both of us decided to find one of those nifty SOS phones along the highway. We had stopped right next to the sign saying '37.4' and the SOS phone was behind us according to the sign. So we walked down the highway looking for the phone. We reached a point where we couldn't see our car behind us and looked ahead but we couldn't see any sign of a phone. All we saw were banners and power stations. So, we walked back to the car then. It's not like we had anything better to do.

A funny thing that happened was Terence called me and the conversation went something like this:

Terence: Hey man! Where are you?
Me: Oh.. Around 20km to KLIA.
Terence: Errr..whatcha doing there man?
Me: Oh nothing. Just stranded in the middle of nowhere. 37.4 km from the Nilai Exit. My car kinda broke down.
Terence: Ah. I actually wanted to call you out to yamcha. Um.. Do you need any help ar?
Me: Nah, it's fine. Tow truck and my dad are on the way.

Yeah. And he said he could hear the restraint in my voice. Heh. I probably owe him the whole story the next time I see him.

Long story short....

My dad arrived. Not in his best moods with me going against his orders to return and not taking up his offer to pick up Seng with me.

I felt really bad for Liza. Putting her in such a position. And also for Seng. We tried reaching him but his phone service was Bruneian and hence, unreachable.

The tow truck arrived 20 minutes later. The merc was still mobile... The guy did a 3point turn in the middle of the highway and we backed it up into the tow truck.

Liza went into my dad's car to go pick up Seng from KL Sentral.

Me. I was stuck with a chinese speaking tow-truck driver and I was getting a chance to practice my limited mandarin on him. I've always had this phobia of practicing my Mandarin. Maybe it had to do something the torture-like methods my 1st Mandarin tutor used to employ on me to teach me our mother tongue. She used to rub tiger balm under my eyes to keep me awake for crying out loud!

Well, that was quite an experience. Really. My 2nd car-breakdown story. My 1st with Jee Wayn near Midvalley but that's another story. Not that car-breaking stories are good experience. Maybe they make good fodder for the grandchildren or possibly mamak sessions.

The next day, we sent the car for check up and servicing. As my mom drove the car down to the mechanice, we were both kinda paranoid. My mom thought she smelled something and was worried it would like blow up.

Apparently, the thermostat had to be fixed and the noise was coz something was blocking the water from flowing. Would I have made it back and forth from the KLIA? Hmm..probably but the car might have been damaged. The towing came up to RM250 btw. That's how much it costs to get something towed from Nilai to Taman Desa. Bleh.

So that's the unfolding saga of the my mom's car. The rose-wood coloured c180 Merc with the Labuan number plate of LA2996. One more 'fond memory' to associate it with.

37.4 Km off the Elite Highway.