I dropped off my car with a mechanic on River Road this morning. I was walking up Freret, heading towards Carrollton. My vague plan was cash, breakfast and then a streetcar ride back to the house.

I was walking by St. Joan of Arc School when I smelled it.

School cafeteria cinnamon buns.

I looked around. Yes, there was the kitchen door, open and putting out good smells.

I knocked on the frame and looked inside.

"Hi," I said, "you don't me and I don't go to school here, but you gotta give me one a them buns 'cause it smells good like a mo'fucker!"

They shooed me away.

On the upside, though, I had breakfast at the Camellia Grill instead. They make some damned fine bacon up in there.

On the downside, however, is the car.

I talked to the mechanic this afternoon. He agreed with a coworker of mine (who made the diagnosis without even looking at the car - well done, coworker!) that the speed sensor had gone out. The speed sensor is a little doohickey that watches the speedometer and tells the transmission to shift. My car has the classic symptoms of speed sensor failure.

Only the mechanic can't find the speed sensor. This is no moron, either. He comes highly recommended from a body shop that I trust.

He looked at the repair manual for the car. The speed sensor is not where the book says it should be.

He called a Mitsubishi dealer. They faxed him a diagram of both where it could be and where it might possibly be.

He still couldn't find it. The dealership told him it was the darnedest thing, wasn't it?

"Now it's personal," he told me on the phone earlier, "this is a simple thing. It pisses me off that I can't find it."

He's taking it to the dealership tomorrow to let them find it. And I'm taking the bus to work.