"What noise"??

At 1:30 pm I am driving to my friend Patty's house. Halfway there the van decides to give me grief. I can barely get going from the light. I slowly gain speed, all the while the van is having a seizure, and then realize my speedomoter is not working, along with the RPM's, and the temp. gage. The check engine light is on, the oil light, the airbag light and the battery light. And the air conditioning is not getting cold. All random stuff. Patty's husband Mark suggests calling two men in our ward who know something about cars and have them look at it to see if it's related to the $1,500.00 in repairs we had done between December and February, the first of which was $500.00 the week before Christmas. Yes, you read correctly. Anyhow, when Mark gets home he gets into the van it's doing all the same things. Thank goodness for witnesses, because I was about to become the "woman who hears things" and the woman who "maybe thought the dash stuff wasn't working". Cause, you know, when stuff goes wrong, the guy who looks at it never gets to experience the same thing the woman who drives it does. It magically fixes itself every time. Am I right? You betcha. And this time is no different. So Patty drives me home after Mark suggests not driving it and having the guys come to thier house to check on it. They get there, and it happens...everything is just dandy. Yes, nothing going wrong, everything sounds great, they drive it to my house and it's just wonderful and lovely and "we don't know, must've been a fluke". Uh huh. Just to be sure, they tell me the other guy will come in the morning and hook up his deely-bobber to see what code it gives. I figure if we get the same code, I can take it back to the place that "fixed" it since it's all still under warranty. But nothing is happening. Whatever code it was has magically cleared itself. No check engine light or anything else. Again, must have been a fluke. "Are you sure the dash wasn't working"? K, do I have a sign that says "please ask me the same question 5 different ways and I promise to answer differently the 5th time"? He tells me cars do that sometimes. It's like a computer, he says. Sometimes it has a glitch and you just have to shut it down and reboot. I ask him, "If it was a fluke and you don't know what caused it, who's to say it won't do a fluke again"? He kinda chuckles and says in that "you're a woman tone", that it's fine. He tells me to take it for a long drive. Drive on the freeway, run some errands, get it warmed up and see what happens...but he's positive it's nothing. So I take him up on it. I drive about 15 miles to do an errand. I stop to drop something off and a friends house, I gas up, I drive the 15 miles. Runs like a dream. Until I get out of Best Buy and try to turn it on. Nada. No stammering to start, nothing. Just blank. No noise. Wonderful. I wait 5 minutes and try again. It starts, but again is having a seizure. A grand-mal one. I call Patty. She rescues me. Again. The van is in the Best Buy parking lot as I type waiting for Isaac and Mark to go out there later tonight and see if they can get it home. I bet you a million bucks it will purr the entire way!!!

To be continued, I'm sure...