A Broken Belt?

I was driving Joyful to work yesterday in her car, so I could hit up the weekly Standard tournament for a box at Mana Core. As we got on the highway the car (98 Mazda 626) smelt a little funny. Like coffee. It almost smelled like when they forgot to tighten a hose clamp on my bike and the radiator fluid leaked all out. I didn't really think anything about it though as this car has something like 180,000 miles and I don't want to spend anymore money on it. We got to Warwick fine, I went to the tournament (2nd place but Top 4 split so we each got 9 packs, I also got 6th place on Friday out of 34 people at Arkham Asylum in CT but it was free so didn't win anything), and got back to CT fine.

This morning Joy bursts into the room and says something about her car being messed up and I need to drive her to work. She says it with urgency though, the tone in her voice implying that I should have jumped straight out of bed and been readily instantly. But of course I am a little tired, its not quite nine, and I don't usually get up for 2 hours. I sit up and try to process the situation. Apparently the car was smoking and it was really hard to turn the steering wheel. She didn't even make it up the driveway. Hmmmm, power steering fluid? Strange that it was fine yesterday. After a few minutes I am ready to go and we speed off in the Orange Crush which hopefully will live a few more years.

When we returned to CT after a hard days work, well at least for Joyful, I checked out the Mazda. The cap where you put coolant in was off...strange. The power steering fluid was full though. I started it up. No smoke, but the steering was still messed up, so I turned it off and looked underneath the car. Did we run some small animal over and it has massive claws (and sharp fangs!) and tore a hole in something? What is that sticking out and touching the ground? I reached underneath the car and pulled out a belt. A broken belt. Great. It looks like it may be user replaceable. Time for some research. If I can replace it, great, if not, well then it becomes decision time. Joy needs to get proficient on my car so she can drive that and I can ride the bike, at least while it is still warm out.