are you fucking serious? vs. rejoice! rejoice!

My very good friend Cal is an atheist, at best a lukewarm agnostic, and he tells me he thinks of me as someone who's pretty religious, I guess because he is so absolutely un-religious. Personally, I don't think I'm that spiritual... i don't have stigmata or see dead saints in the swirls of pastry frosting. I don't go to church regularly, I don't associate myself with a religion, i frequently use the Lord's name in vain and always forget to remove the vowels when typing Yaweh...case in point.

But I do have moments when I think very strongly there is some greater force acting in my life, best illustrated by this drive across the country.

It took me two days to drive from NJ to Houston, TX, delayed slightly by a flat tire, which seemed uncanny after a summer of biking across the country and getting substantially more flat tires than either of my co-bikers.

After spending a weekend in TX, I continued north to Portland, stopping at a Ramada Inn first to steal continental breakfast. Now, to begin, I know stealing is wrong...hell, being in the backseat of a cop car in 7th grade for shop lifting is a good reminder that stealing is frowned upon. But I always think of eating continental breakfast without actually staying at the hotel as a victimless crime, not unlike stealing a wireless signal or bombing people in countries that are too far away for you to worry about.

Anyway, this spread was amazing: scrambled eggs, sausage, canadian bacon (known as ham in the US), biscuits with gravy, and home fries, along with the usually breads, pastries, and fruits. And most importantly, there were no employees lording over the food... this is what we in the scavenging circles call a "free for all."

So I loaded my plate with hot food and repeatedly made trips back up to fill my pockets with non-perishable Nature Valley granola bars and bananas. Then, I saw there was a bag of Lender's bagels and I shoved it under my coat. As I ate, I began feeling more and more guilty about the bagels, like it was horribly hypocritical of me to be thanking God for all the good graces He's bestowed, then go and do something so blatantly wrong.

For some reason, I only felt guilty about the bagels. Not the plate of eggs and biscuits (they'll have to throw that out anyway, right? completely ignoring the fact that they have to cook more because of my share), not the granola bars or bananas (normal people would take a couple, or in this case, a dozen Nature Valley Granola bars to go, too).

Well it got to a point where I threw my fork down and started yelling in my head, "Fine! Fucking fine! I'll put the damn bagels back already. Just get off my back!" I only mention this whole bagel thing because I thought by putting them back, I'd made things square with God, but realized I hadn't when I filled up my gas tank in Little America, WY (one of those tourist traps that is advertised via billboard for 100 miles before you get there and then you realize it's just a gigantic souvenir shop, and what do people do with those two foot long pencils anyway? They don't even fit in pencil sharpeners). When I tried to start my car back up, it wouldn't turn over. Mind you, before I left Jersey, I spent $350 to get a check engine light to turn off, so I assumed everything underneath there was back in working order. And usually, I can laugh a lot of shit off, but after the flat tire one driving day earlier, I was pretty fed the fuck up.

A kindly gentleman helped me push the car into a parking spot, and if there was a bright spot, at least my car died in Little America which had its own mechanic. I walked across the expansive parking lot the whole time bitching, "Really, God? You shut off my car for a plate of crappy scrambled eggs and bananas? I even returned the damn bagels!"

Turns out the mechanic shop only worked on big rigs, but they could provide towing to the nearest town, about 35 miles back east, for about $130. I spent the next half hour on the phone with AAA trying to find out if it would be more affordable to join AAA and pay the registration fee to get their member discounts, or just pay the towing fee straight up. But having a new jersey address without planning to live there, planning to live in OR without an address, and being stranded in WY, there was quite a bit of of holding and transferring.

Anyway, it made no sense to sign up with AAA because I'd have to register in NJ, and though they said it would take effect immediately, the AAA of Wyoming said there would be an additional service fee to get it to work that moment. So I broke down and asked Shauna in the repair shop for a tow. Though I had been in there at least three times to discuss options for my car, she had neither the empathetic tone of voice or understanding smile I like to see in service people when you are bleeding money onto their company's floor. Not her problem, I guess. The tow truck wouldn't be ready for three hours, coincidentally, it too needed work and had to be brought to Salt Lake City, which didn't give me much confidence. If I was being towed by a tow truck and it broke down, would I have to pay for the tow truck that comes to tow it away?

So, to bide my time, sat on the hood of my car in the parking lot of this enormous souvenir shop playing my guitar. I thought for a moment that I could put out a hat and maybe raise enough money in coins to pay for the tow and the subsequent repairs, but realized I'd lost my hat a long time ago, and that made me even sadder. So I just sat on the car strumming Beatles songs when a hippie Arkansas couple walked into the souvenir shop and smiled at me. When they came back out, they asked me about my guitar and we started chatting.

"Where you heading?"
"No where, " I said. "My car's dead. I'm just waiting for a tow."
"You got any car repair knowledge?"
"No," I say as my manhood shrinks in shame.
"Pop the hood and i'll give it a look."

So he takes out a ratchet set and pliers and a pocket knife and starts cleaning my battery connections for me, which my dad had warned me about two weeks earlier, but I'd ignored because I didn't want to waste the money on a ratchet set, whereas I've had no qualms spending money in other places, say for 100 chicken nuggets at McDonald's.




As the guy, Milo, was cleaning my connections, his girlfriend, Melissa, I think, asked me a question, but because of her Arkansas twang and my general prejudices towards people who travel across the country to follow jam bands, as they were doing, I thought she said, "Do you want to buy some weed?"

I got all flustered and tried to think back to my 4th grade DARE training and was ready to scream at her, "I'm not a chicken, you're a turkey!" Instead I asked her to repeat herself and it turns out she wanted to sell me BEADS, not WEED. So I bought a bead from her, and though I don't normally wear jewelry, I wear this bead every day because it reminds me there are people looking out for me.

After about fifteen minutes, my car could start again. I didn't know how to repay them and they certainly didn't ask for anything at all. Finally asked if I could buy them lunch, and again, miscommunication occurred when I thought she said, "Well, I would like some E," which actually was, "Well I would like some MEAT."

So this latest car debacle which I expected to cost me $130 for towing plus who knows how much in repairs, parts, labor, ended up actually costing me $5 for a bead and $5.85 for four chicken fingers and a beef and bean burrito. I am eternally grateful to them.

Back on the road after that 2.5 hour delay, I felt refreshed... alive. Felt joyful and apologized to God for assuming He shut down my car just to teach me a lesson about the continental breakfast (though I was too scared to try it again). Clearly this car malfunction wasn't a punishment, but a chance for me to see the goodness in this world.

I was able to laugh about it all at this point, driving through Utah and the late afternoon, even thinking, at least it gives me something to blog about, but as horribly fatiguing as the flat tire and the breakdown were, it just doesn't translate to paper well. It doesn't sound horrible enough. Maybe if I had one more problem... problems look more impressive in threes.

At dusk, in Idaho, my dumbass wish was granted when I felt a familiar thump, thump, thump, thump and pulled over to find another completely shredded tire; this time the front right.

What can you do at that point? What's funny is that any time I try to look on the bright side during these situations, something else always craps on my face. Like with this tire, i started changing it and thought, "Hey, at least it's quick and easy to take off a flat tire on a car than on a bicycle." Then I spent twenty minutes trying to pull off the tire after taking off the nuts, which for some reason was just stuck, cutting my fingers on the exposed steel wiring.



Mandy helped me get the numbers for tire repair shops, but unlike the flat in Louisiana, I was much further away from rescue (about 15 miles), and it was nightfall so places probably wouldn't be open. I spoke to a guy named Chris who told me where his shop was and just let me know it would cost $90 per hour for service because it was after hours. Told him that I would just take it to the shop now and wait till morning to fix it.

Found the place at about 7:00, my donut held up thankfully and planned to just sleep in the parking lot the whole night. I did not look forward to this. I'd been sleeping in my car on the road the whole time, but I'd only sleep for two or three hours at a time because, as you might guess, it's sort of uncomfortable to sleep in cold car that's stuffed with all your belongings so you have to sleep sitting upright. A whole night--the place opened at 7:30--seemed pretty daunting. I thought about breaking out a gift bottle of whiskey i got as a going away present from an old roommate, drink enough to just fall asleep, but worried that I'd have less wiggle room with a cop if he came and found me drunk in a car.

So I just listened to Delilah on the radio and tried to sleep when I saw a pickup truck pull into the driveway. The guy I'd spoken to, Chris, was back to take care of some paperwork, found me sleeping in the parking lot and felt so bad for me, he fixed my tire right then (about 9:00 PM) at this point without charging me the after hours fee, or even a service fee. "I couldn't let you sleep out there all night," he said when I tried to tell him it was okay, I could wait until morning.

See? I was blessed a second time by excessively kind people. I made it to Portland, OR by morning, and though I'm continuing to have car problems this week (seems to be a radiator problem this time), at least I'm not stranded in Wyoming or Idaho. Based on all these car issues, and getting bailed out of them each time, the religious side of me starts getting a little more vocal. Instead of just accepting that maybe I have a shitty car and I bought cheap tires, I have this odd feeling that these are all tests of my will, that something much, much more terrible will happen to me in the future. As if all these incidents were meant to give me a catalog of memories to remind me when this yet-to-be-determined-very-worst moment strikes that bad things have happened before and I've always found a way out of them.

This really isn't a gutsy prediction, as far as prophecies go. Very bad things happen to everyone all the time, what with diseases, frequency of car accidents, and the Knicks perpetually sucking year after year. I can predict that you'd probably be less inclined to read this blog next week if I keep making each posting this long.