[What’s not] working at the carwash

Working at the car wash, oh-ohoohoho.
Working at the car wash, yeah.

I tell you what wasn’t working at the car wash.

The roof of our Subaru.

And I’m not talking about the sunroof, which has been tightly sealed shut since a huntsman decided to seek refuge on a stormy night through a crack you could barely toss a pancake through.

But this story has nothing to do with trespassing spiders.

It’s more channeling natural disaster energy.

I pulled up at the servo with the only known automatic car wash in the greater Sydney region.

I wish paying for the car wash was automatic, but for some reason you must get out of your car, walk into the servo, wait for the computer program to boot up, listen to the attendant mutter not-so-sweet nothings under their breath, all while being forced to make small talk.

Small talk.
My least favourite form of torture.

My attempts were as dull as the dusty exterior of my Subaru Outback, but without the sprayed cockatoo poo to jazz it up.

I still think Subaru had dreams of grandeur when they named this family car.

The only thing Outback about this car is where I park it.
Out back.
Around the side.
Under some shady, spider-housing, cockatoo-loving, leaf-shedding trees.

For months, we had known water pooled in the roof.
We knew.

After every rainstorm, which is pretty much every day this year in Sydney, we could hear the gigantic slosh as we pulled up at traffic lights.

Woooosh! Slosh!

Much like the sound water makes when it gushes up against the edge of the bathtub.

Except rather than overflowing onto the bathroom floor, it would slowly drip down the panel between the windscreen and passenger door, making the floor damp. Before I discovered the slosh, I thought Lark had abandoned a Macca’s cup of ice under there.

But just as the roof would fill up, it would also empty. And we'd forget about it.
Or perhaps this made our denial feel more justified.

The other thing we knew, as these things tend to go, was that it was going to be a big and expensive job to fix.

So we did what all good folks trying to survive the avalanche of cozzie lives do.
We left it.

We grew somewhat accustomed to the pop-up swimming pool on our car roof.

Could be worse.
At least it’s not rats.

But denial only works as an avoidant’s dating strategy.

It definitely doesn’t make car issues better.

As I pulled into the automatic car wash, I studiously entered the digits into the panel, determined to get it right first go for no reason other than the competitive spirit is alive and well. Competing with all the other strangers who clearly aren’t as good at this as I am.
What is wrong with me.

The green light beckoned me into the big glass box, kitted out with water jets, soap sprayers and gigantic brushes that literally slap your car clean.

Then promptly stopped me with a big red-mean-stop-light.

I compulsively did the window and sunroof check several times, confirming the cabin was indeed ready for takeoff.

The low rumbles started. The beeps chirped.
Then a high-powered stream of water hit my car with great force, much like a tsunami determined to destroy everything in its path.
And before we could even get to the brushes...

The destruction began.

Water started gushing into the car.
I repeat.
IN. TO. THE. CAR.

It pooled in the driver’s footwell. It pooled in the passenger footwell. It poured through side panels and interior lights. The fabric interior darkened in circular damp patterns as the water first seeped, then flooded.

The car was filling up with water!

Now, to be clear, filling up is a huge exaggeration.

It wasn’t like we were in a breached submarine, watching the water rise to foot, then waist, then shoulder height.

But when you’re in a car wash, there is no emergency stop.

What am I supposed to do?

Open the door and battle the high-pressure spray, soap and those slapping brushes?
I’m not a fool. And I certainly didn’t want to battle strangers for the car wash Darwin Award.

Let’s just say more water entered the car than is supposed to when you haven’t left a window open.
A lot more. Which, in car land, is a lot more than zero.

I knew this was the end.
The end of putting off booking the car in with Subaru.
The end of money in my wallet as I know it.

RaRa often jokes that every time we get our car serviced it costs $4K.
And you know what?
He was right.

As I sheepishly explained the leaky roof:

Sounds like the sunroof vents are blocked. We’ll take a look.

They waved me goodbye, not even offering the free coffee and cake voucher they usually give me to make the financial pain feel somewhat better.

First came the service.

$847.

Then came the roof.

$2.7K.

What causes the roof of a Subaru Outback to fill up with water?

The prognosis?

According to the technician, the sunroof and plenum chamber drains are blocked with leaves and debris, causing water to enter the vehicle.

Leaves and debris.

You know, the sort of thing you might find under some shady, spider-housing, cockatoo-loving, leaf-shedding trees.

Now, to be clear, nobody at Subaru actually blamed the trees.

But I'm pretty good at joining the dots. And it's hard to be angry at trees when all they do is exist to make neighbourhoods look pretty, provide us with oxygen and occasionally find themselves at the centre of the odd neighbourhood dispute.

Wrong place, wrong time.

To clear the drains, they need to remove the interior trim and roof lining, the front wheel arch splash guards and plenum chamber trims, then pull out the seats and carpet.

So pretty much deconstruct the car, like a fashion critic dismantling red carpet outfit choices at the Logies.

They also need to check, clean and lubricate all the electrical connectors under the carpet, presumably because electrical connectors aren't particularly fond of living at the bottom of a Subaru swimming pool.

I'm not blaming Subaru for the blocked drains.

Our car. Our leaves. Our months of enthusiastically ignoring the pop-up mobile swimming pool above our heads.

Fair enough.

How much did our Subaru Outback water leak cost to repair?

What I wasn't prepared for was the hourly rate.

Eleven hours of labour. No parts. $2.7K.

That’s $254 per hour.

Two hundred and fifty-four dollars. Per hour.

And I had to push harder than I should have to get a transparent breakdown of that cost. I didn't like that.

If you know a service centre with actual reasonable rates...

PLEASE TELL ME.

And to add insult to financial injury, they told me that if I didn’t leave the car with them today, they wouldn’t be able to do the work for weeks.

And now it needs to stay in the shop for five days.
For an 11-hour job.

So here I am.
No house keys.
Car-less.
Free cake-less.

And somehow needing to get Lark all the way across the city to daycare for an entire week without a car.

That’s more than an hour to daycare. One way. Then another 40 minutes into the city for work.

Fuck.

I’m both damp and salty.

And like the carpets in the car that are about to be ripped up, I’m seething with the energy of a mouldy, damp dog.