October 20, 2011

by Stephen Jan in New York, NY

We dropped off the ambulance at Ivy Lane Auto Services in Tenafly a couple weeks ago to a skeptical mechanic. The look on his face said it all. I’ll never forget that blank “What on earth have you done” look he gave me. Naturally my inner dialog responded something like “Umm.., i have no idea what i’m doing”. Anyway, after a visual inspection he concluded “It’s not that bad”. I was surprised and exclaimed, “Great! so it’s good shape?” He responded “No I didn’t say that, it’s just not that bad” I had no idea what that meant but i figure it was better than telling us that the car won’t make it.

A week goes by and Steve calls me at work. I pickup the phone and he tells me that he needs to show me something about the car and that I had to come immediately. My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t have the courage to step up and ask him what was wrong and risk feeling depressed for the rest of the day. It turned out that the breaks were completely shot and that the red flashing brake light on the dash indicated critical brake failure, not that the parking break was engaged. He concluded that we needed a couple new tires and that we should replace the vacuum pump.

Now all we had to do was paint the ambulance.