3-man Wrecking Crew

October 29, 2007

Current Location: Columbus, OH
Next Destination: Louisville, KY
Miles Driven: 4200 miles

Mark, Eytan, and I are all here in Columbus now. I've been through some crazy fucked up night of misfortunes and within 3 hours of them getting in, we managed to completely outstay our welcome here in Columbus. We are a 3-man wrecking crew!

Miraculously Mark, Eytan, and I all managed to meet at the Columbus Airport. Since I didn't have Eytan's number and didn't know where Mark was flying from or what airline he was flying on , I had to go through some serious investigation on my own to figure out where he was. I won't bore y'all with the details of how I located him, but man, against all our odds, we managed to unite in Columbus, OH. Funny how just the night before, Mark was in Toronto with some crazy biologist, Eytan was at Raleigh's in Berkeley appeasing his friend's marriage break-up, and I was getting towed into Columbus by this stripper monger....now we are all here in Columbus. It seriously took a small miracle that we all ened up here with absolutely no information on each other's itineraries or whereabouts. Needless to say, we needed to all go out and celebrate our union with a beer, so we headed to a bar near OSU.

We pulled into this alley way next to the bar and parked the car in an empty spot we saw. We went in, had 2 beers, had some wings, shot the shit, had some laughs, and we were ready to call it a night. We were there for less than an hour. We headed back our car just to find the car gone. By the way, this is Troy's car that he let me borrow all day to collect oil and to pick up N and E. We all initially thought it was stolen. All of their stuff, including a $3000 camera from their school, laptop, my bike...everything was in that car and it was gone. That would've seriously ended up all of our trip right there and then if the car had been stolen, fortunately, that wasn't the case. Long story short, the car had been towed and we were looking at $134 to get it out of the lot, and worst part of it all was that Troy was the only one who could get the car out of the lot. This meant waking Troy up at 3 in the morning where he was having his 1st night together with his girlfriend who's been out of town for a week and just had gotten back last night, to come pick us up from a fuckin' bar and take us to the impound lot from where he had to get his own car out. This is after he'd let me borrow his car all day and opened up his apartment for us to stay in, and was planning on lettting me use his car the next day while Bertha was getting worked on. Needless to say, I felt like a fuckin' dick and felt so stupid about the whole situation but it had to be done. So I called up Troy, broke the bad news to him, and had him come pick us up to get his own car out of the impound lot. Troy was expressively angry but we could all tell that he was just irrate and was boiling over inside. You know..one of those silence treatments we used to get from our parents? It was like that. That car ride from the bar to the impound lot was the most awkward silent ride of my life. Anyways, after getting his car out, he led us back to his apartment and he headed back to his place. The story doesn't end here.

In my defense and just to preface what happend next, every apartment building in his neighborhood looks EXACTLY identical. So we park Troy's car, get all of our stuff out, and we walked over to what I thought was his apartment. It's hella dark, I can't really see the keys, and I had to fiddle around with the lock and keys for like 10 minutes and I jsut could not get the damn door to open. For a split second, I did think that maybe this wasn't Troy's apartment but everything else just felt right and familar. Well after fiddling aroudn witht his door for 10 minutes, we see a random stranger pop up at the door yelling "What the hell are you doing?" Here I was with the key stuck in the key hole, looking up at his angry stranger behind the glass, and I had no back up. Mark and Eytan just flet the scene bursting up laughing as soon as this guy popped out. I profuciously apologized and get the hell out of there as fast as I could. After all we've been through tonight already, now I've managed to wake up his neighbor at 4am while trying to break into his house. Just the icing on the cake. After more careful inspection, I located his aparment just around the corner and successfully got in. What a fuckin' night! Eytan's flight got in at 1am and this was 4am at this point. In 3 hours that we've united, we managed to get Troy's car towed, tried to break into his neighbor's apartment, and most likeley completely outstayed our welcome at Troy's place. Un-fuckin'-believable. The worst part of all this was that they didnt' have to deal with Troy in the morning...oh correction...in about 2 hours. Troy was coming at 6:30am to take me to the shop where Bertha was. Great...just fuckin' great. We all went to bed all feeling like a dick, a little stupid, and more than anything couldn't do anything else but to laugh at ourselves for the fucked-up ridiculous event we've involved ourselves tonight.

I woke up to Troy walking into the house, we drove to the mechanic shop. I apologized to Troy and told him that I was a dick and felt really irresponsible, stupid, and bad about the whole situation last night. Troy had mellowed out a bit but he still wasn't exactly cool about the whole situation. Of coure, I probably wouldn't be either. Anyways, I checked Bertha into the shop, authorized them to do testing, went back to Troy's place and went back to sleep. By the way, Troy was originally gonna let us borrow his car today while Bertha was being worked on but due to last night's mishap, he was gonna take the car and leave us on our own devices. Completely understandable, right? I wouldn't trust these random 3 dumbass strangers from CA either if they had gotten my car towed and had woken me up 3 in the morning. Anyways, we all slept in till 1pm and I've been just lounging around Columbus all day waiting for Bertha to be done.

Bertha's injection pump failed. Shitty but it's not as bad as I thoguth it would be. Ford diesels are notoriously known for their injection pump failure so not a surprise there. The good news is that they have the part in stock and they can get it done by the end of today so we can get out of here first thing tomorrow morning. The bad news is that it's anywhere from $1200 to $1500 repair. ($900 in parts alone....wtf?...this is the problem with diesels..the parts are so expensive compared to gasoline cars) Ouch. Bertha....she's turning out to be one high maintenance lady. Another bad news is that it means we have to stay another night in Columbus, OH. Troy had opened up his place for us to stay one more night if we needed to, but honestly, I think we would all sleep better if we got out of his sight and sleep in a motel somewhere which also means more dollars. God this was our first night as a crew in Columbus, I can't even imagine what kinda of shit we are gonna get ourselves into in next several days. Wish all of us luck including Bertha....looking at our track record already, it's gonna take all the luck in the world and a small fuckin' miracle for us to make it through the next segment of the trip in one piece.

p.s. Troy, I'm really sorry about what happened and what I put you through last night despite all your generosity and hospitality. I haven't felt this bad since I left on this trip. In fact, I haven't felt this bad in a long long time. My bad!