"The guy at the garage said fill it up, set the odometer to zero, drive 40 miles, and come back. It will pass with no problem."
That's what Heidi told me when she picked up the Jeep last week after it failed its emissions test for the second time. It sounded like hocus pocus to me, but you don't really have a lot of options when you have no idea about the thing you need fixed. As a couple of women, we do our best in this area, enlisting men when we can, and trying to find establishments we trust.
In what can not be characterized as anything other than avoidance, we got home, parked the Jeep, and let it sit there. Unfortunately, its registration expires tomorrow, so yesterday we hopped in and headed out. My first idea was to drive straight down the interstate for 20 miles and then turn around. It might have worked, but for the sign we saw just a few miles down the road, Exit 160 12 miles 37 minutes.
"Oh no," I said, "Get off at the Beltway."
From there it was like a puzzle-- what would be a 40 mile loop from our house? I was all over it. With an eye on the mileage, we passed Route 50, Route 7, and I-66. "Let's take the GW Parkway," I said. We were only at 29 miles when we came to I-395, so we kept going through Old Towne and back up King Street to home.
Mileage? 40.1
Epilogue: It passed!
That's what Heidi told me when she picked up the Jeep last week after it failed its emissions test for the second time. It sounded like hocus pocus to me, but you don't really have a lot of options when you have no idea about the thing you need fixed. As a couple of women, we do our best in this area, enlisting men when we can, and trying to find establishments we trust.
In what can not be characterized as anything other than avoidance, we got home, parked the Jeep, and let it sit there. Unfortunately, its registration expires tomorrow, so yesterday we hopped in and headed out. My first idea was to drive straight down the interstate for 20 miles and then turn around. It might have worked, but for the sign we saw just a few miles down the road, Exit 160 12 miles 37 minutes.
"Oh no," I said, "Get off at the Beltway."
From there it was like a puzzle-- what would be a 40 mile loop from our house? I was all over it. With an eye on the mileage, we passed Route 50, Route 7, and I-66. "Let's take the GW Parkway," I said. We were only at 29 miles when we came to I-395, so we kept going through Old Towne and back up King Street to home.
Mileage? 40.1
Epilogue: It passed!
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