Under the Hood

Today when I was heading back home from work, the "check engine" light came out. It started blinking at random intervals, staying on while I stopped at a red light, blinking when I stepped on the gas, and then it turned off when I stopped at the next red light, but then it started blinking again. In other words the damn light was coming out, and there's something going on under the hood that I both want to know what is, but at the same time don't want to pay for such "knowledge".

The first car I had here in the US was a Mitsubishi Eclipse, and that little baby's dashboard at some point looked like a Christmas tree: every single light was coming out and I had to spend endless hours and buckets of cash trying to fix it. Eventually I gave up and got me an Accord.

Honda is perhaps the most reliable car brand and my Accord was always right there, ready to go and come back wherever I wanted to. One day my friend Yujiro sold me his customized Nissan 240sx for a couple hundred bucks and I was planning to sell it for its fair market value and make 3,000 bucks in such transaction. But I made a mistake: I took the Nissan for a test drive one Sunday afternoon and while waiting for the green light at a lonely intersection I said to myself "Let's see what this puppy can do" and I stepped on the gas. After that day I never looked back and pretty much gave the Accord away to a friend of mine.

Now I have a little red missile with a monster under the hood, but with the damn "check engine" light coming out.

Oh! my good old Accord, where are thou, brother?