Car Trouble

Tonight was an adventure.
The Mission: retrieve an eBay item for my father.
The Package: a table saw in garden grove.
The Equipment: My father's old Mazda MPV

After work I drove over to my father's place in eagle rock to pick up his car. This was my first mistake. I should have taken my own car and a wrench to take the table saw off of its wooden base. Once I had my father's car I drove down to Garden Grove and picked up the package. It is really not much to look at but what do you want for $30? I then got shaky directions from the seller to my friend Jeff's place, and headed over to catch dinner with him. Dinner was good (Red Robin) and chatting was good. I wish Jeff and I lived closer. At about 11:30pm I left Jeff's place and headed back to Eagle Rock in the minivan. This is where our little tale takes a turn for the worse. I called my father on the way back to tell him about the table saw and a few other things (most of which are mentioned in this blog) when at about 12:15am the engine cut out. That's it, It just cut out, no bang no grinding noise nothing and the car began to coast. I quickly said to my dad "the engine just died and the check engine lite came on I gotta go" and hung up barely waiting for a reply. I steered the car over to the right shoulder and stopped. Car dead, reason unknown.
Once on the shoulder I made a few calls. My lady (Sarah) to let her know what was going on. She had called me while I was talking to my father, and she was probably wondering where I was. I called my mother who has AAA, and I called my father to tell him what had just happened to his car.
so the new plan was this: call AAA, Get the car back to Eagle Rock, Go home and sleep. This took the rest of the night. My mother had to get my location on the 5, and then we called for the tow truck, and then I called my father to check about paying $9.50 per mile (after the first 7 miles) to get the car towed, and then driving, and unloading the car, and finally waking my step brother to tell him all about the fiasco.
My souvenir for the night is a pair of needle nose pliers that I found on the freeway. Totally worth it!