Lex drives Eve to school each morning, but yesterday they had to go early because Lex had jazz band rehearsal. Eve didn’t want to wait in the school, so Lex let her wait in the car. He told her to turn it off and lock it when she came inside. Apparently she locked it, but didn’t turn it off. In the Tesla you don’t have to turn it off and Lex says his car normally turns itself off after 10 minutes with no key (Eve took the key into the school with her), but for some unknown reason the car didn’t turn off. Later in the day someone told him his headlights were still on and when he got out to check it out the battery had died. 

He texted me mid day and told me the car was dead. My school day was already stressful, so I told him I’d be there after school to get him and we could figure it out then. After school finally came and it was cold and raining. The car was definitely dead. We walked around the parking lot for a bit, looking for an outlet. No luck. However, I did noticed the Rapid Rescue trucks setting up for the weekly vaccination clinic in the parking lot. I accosted some young guy in a Rapid Rescue shirt and asked if we could borrow a generator. He was nice enough to help us out and brought over a generator. He got it running and we plugged the car in. No luck. The car wasn’t charging from the generator. We called Alan for advice and he suggested the smaller starter battery was dead and needed a jump start. Ugh.

I returned the generator to the Covid folks and asked about a jump start, but by this point the clinic had begun and the guy I returned the generator to was less friendly than the first guy, and he said he just couldn’t help at all. Which is totally understandable.

I sent an SOS email to my lovely neighborhood list serve and 10 minutes later my neighbor Sally was there. She had jumper cables and an functioning vehicle. We hooked it all up, but still couldn’t get the car running. We left it hooked up for awhile then tried again. No luck.

By this point we were 90+ minutes into dealing with this, in the rain and encroaching darkness, so I was just ready to give up. I called a tow truck and went home.

The tow truck driver had a jump start kit and was able to get it started enough to release the clutch lock and roll it onto the flatbed truck. At the house he hooked the jump start kit back up and rolled it into the garage. We plugged it in and checked it a few hours later. It was charged and started up with no trouble. Thankfully!!!