The rest of the adventure was brought about by the joy of traveling across the country. For those curious, it takes about 1,160 miles and 18 hours to get to St. Louis (with only food/restroom/gas stops). When we traveled there, we had a series of medical mishaps that caused us to leave much later than expected. So, when faced with the choice of getting a hotel for 4 hours in Nebraska or just driving, we just kept driving. James met a nice officer who gave him a courtesy warning for traveling 83 in a 75. Otherwise, the drive was filled with unforturnately unhealthy food and lots of caffeine. The fact that from 1am to about 6am Nebraska is covered in a thick fog was just a nice added touch.
The return trip brought the most excitement. At about 11:30pm and about 40 miles from home (and 40 miles from anyone) we shredded a tire. This was probably brought about by the 15 miles of torn up road and pot holes we had just encountered, but really it was quite exciting. So, James and I set to work to change the tire, and are having difficulty with the mechanism that lowers the tire from the undercarriage.
A nice man stops by to help us get that step done, and we thank him and send him off, thinking we can get it from here. I mean, I've changed tires on other cars and James has specifically changed a tire on this car, how hard can it be?
Once we get the tire out, James and I are working to get the jack positioned under the car, which is only made worse by the 800 gazillion bugs that are attracted to our little flashlight, which is quite possibly the only light source for a good 10-15 miles.
Then two highly unfortunate events occurred.
1) our jack broke.
2) our battery died.
At this point, AAA is our best option, and we give them a call. They say the will send someone out and we patiently wait. As we wait, more good samaritans stop by. The first was "Meth Man Zak".
After jumping out of his truck to help, Zak gets straight to business, working faster than a NASCAR pit crew. At some point one of the lug nuts is stuck, so he breaks it off, mumbling that they're pretty cheap and we'll be just fine. He then gets the jack from his car which he "stole" from a friend and gets to work. In his flurry of enthusiasm he breaks our tire wrench as well. So, the story wasn't real clear, but he's from Texas, he was in WY for some reason and is headed to Albuquerque for a VA appt. However, he was also at one point on loan from the Marines, kicked out of the armed forces (special services?), responsible for a load of missing CIA operatives and/or offered a 300K/year job in Virginia which he turned down because in Virginia it "costs $5 for a hot dog and $20 for a Coke". Regardless, he managed to change our tire, break the rest of our tools, and explain his entire military career in seemingly 5 minutes. It was quite appreciated.
As he jumped in his car and drove off, we hadn't asked for a jump, so we went back to just waiting. The next good samaritan to show up was driving a double-tanked oil truck. Though understandably uncertain about parking his rig in the middle of a 65mph highway at midnight, he pulled up and offered us a jump. His rig was similar to this one, and getting the cars pulled up next to one another was no small feat:
We were however, able to get the car jumped easily without the truck impeding others' travel plans. While waiting for the car to idle/charge and make our next plans, the AAA help showed up . . . in a sporty red Mercedes. Not only was this unexpected, but they made exceedingly impressive time from town. Though everything had been taken care of, they offered to follow us back to town just in case. After the first 30 miles of my "slow" travel at 70mph, they called to say they thought we were going to be fine. They then passed us and disappeared over the horizon, and it became clear that at probably 110mph, we really weren't that far into the middle of nowhere :)
We made it home at the much later time of 2:30am, and were greeted by a barking dog and whining cats, as expected. Now James and I are recovering from our junk food, caffeine sugar hangovers and trying to get back to a normal week.
Hooray cross-country trips.
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