The drive from Richmond to Gainesville is pretty dull. The uniformity of scenery accounts for much of the boredom. That is, the landscape and flora one sees along Interstate 95 hardly changes over hundreds of miles. Until you reach the Virginia state line, everything looks like Florida. So, I was not looking forward to the long drive home following our trip to Kat and Harris’s wedding.
We had stopped for food in North Carolina somewhere, and filled up with gas at least once. We were about halfway through South Carolina when I heard a rhythmic beating. At first I thought I was riding over a damaged portion of road. Then I felt the steering fail, and I knew at once it was the right front tire. Fortunately, I was in the right lane, and could get off the road without too much trouble. I pulled as far off as I could while still keeping the flat tire on the asphalt.
Now, I am, of course, perfectly capable of changing a tire. But it was pitch black outside—the Milky Way Galaxy was easily visible—and we were on the side of one of the nation’s busiest highways, and since Kaitlyn is a member of whatever the Canadian version of AAA is and offered to call them, we decided to just wait for assistance. South Carolina is so boring that we hadn’t been paying attention to where we were exactly. Fortunately, our phones have GPS, so I could see that we were about halfway between Highway 78 and Highway 61. Kaitlyn gave the information to the operator, and we were told we’d have help within the hour. So, we just stepped off into the brush by the side of the road and waited it out. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t raining, and we weren’t anywhere otherwise dangerous.
An hour passed and no assistance appeared. Then my phone rang. The service guy was totally wrong about where we were. He didn’t even know we were on the Interstate. I knew the dispatcher told him correctly, because she repeated what we told her verbatim. Then the service called us back: “You’re on 95 south between 61 and 62, right?” No! So I told him again, and he once again told me it would be twenty minutes.
After much longer than twenty minutes he arrived. He started digging around his truck for his jack, and when he found it he put it under the Volkswagen. But he couldn’t get it to go up. I told him that I had a jack, but he kept fooling around with his. He clearly wasn’t going to get it to work, so he starting screwing around with two bottle jacks, but couldn’t get those to work, either. Finally, I reminded him that I had a jack. He used it, and of course it worked. But he jacked up the car before loosening the lug nuts.
When he put the spare tire on, I asked him if he could inflate it, because it had been in the trunk so long and I was sure it had lost some pressure. “Sure”, he said. He had a compressor in the truck. But his compressor didn’t work, so, no, he couldn’t inflate the tire. Once the tire was on, and I walked around to the driver’s side door to get in, he was peeling out. I knew that was a bad sign, because the hazard lights had been on for hours. Of course the car wouldn’t start.
I immediately called the guy, and he said he would come back.
When he got back to us, he tried to pull his truck around, but he got stuck in the mud. I was not at all surprised. Canada, who has a great deal of experience getting out of tough situations in trucks offered to help him out. Once he had us jumped I pleaded with him to wait for us to get underway, and follow us to the next exit.
There, we filled the tire, got some snacks, and were back on our way to Gainesville. Alas, instead of arriving before midnight, we got home closer to 3:30AM.
It was a crummy experience, but Miriam and I were both happy to have Kaitlyn with us. Her personality calms everyone down. Her signature phrase is “no worries”.
Filed under: Friends, Transportation, Travel on December 28th, 2011 | No Comments »