We were somwhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert...
There were no drugs, but there certainly was desert. Lots of it.
My ex-girlfriend/former room-mate and I were making an attempt at a road trip from Las Vegas, Nevada to San Francisco, California. She needed to pick up some of her belongings from her apartment there, as she was in the process of moving to Vegas. We got up and out the door around 8 in the morning, and started driving.
We were about 60 miles outside of Barstow when her P.O.S. Volvo broke down. This car was old. It was legal before I was. Luckily, Moriah had a Triple A membership, and she had two free 100 mile tows. She called triple A, and about 15-20 minutes later, Larry showed up. Larry was an oddly quiet guy with a cleft lip. I began to worry that we were headed into cheesy horror movie territory. He hooked up the Volvo to his tow truck, and drove us to THE mechanic garage in Barstow. Moriah filled out the paperwork to get her car fixed and such, Larry lowered Moriah’s car off of his tow-truck, and I smoked a cigarette.
Larry was just about done lowering the car when Chris, the mechanic working the front counter came out and asked if we were in any position to rent a car. Of course we weren’t. As it turns out, the shop only had one guy that could work on a Volvo, and he was out of town until Wednesday. This was unacceptable, as Moriah and I both had to be back in Vegas for work by Monday.
We ran back over to Larry to ask him if he could take us to another shop. He told us that he didn’t have time, and left.
Thanks Larry.
A little annoyed, we got into the car (which, at this point, could get up to maybe 25mph and shakes violently when running) and looked for another shop that could help us. Long story short, we found one, and they told us that we had a dead cylinder. In a Volvo, a dead cylinder is a totaled car. This thing wasn’t leaving Barstow today. We had to start coming up with ideas on how the hell we were going to escape. We decided that maybe the Greyhound was an option. A crappy option, but an option nonetheless. We got back in the piece of crap car that sounded like a lawn mower, and drove to the local Greyhound station. Which, in Barstow, is the same thing as the local Mall.
We got to the Greyhound station and started asking about fares and times, and how long it would take to get to Vegas, or how long it would take to get to San Francisco. We still hadn’t abandoned that idea completely. The next bus to Vegas wasn't leaving until 5pm. The next bus to San Francisco isn’t leaving until 5:30pm.
Useless.
At this point, it was high noon in the desert, and we were feeling like we were never going to escape this town. We were standing in front of Moriah’s car looking at the engine in bafflement, trying to think of what to do, when a man rolled out from under the pickup truck in the parking space next to us and said “Car trouble?”
The local sleuth, apparently.
He was having some trouble of his own, but he had just finished fixing his car. He decided that he would try to help us out and take a look at our car. He tinkered around with the engine for a little while, and decided that the cylinder wasn’t dead, it was just a bad spark plug. He needed more tools to fix the car.
He asked us to follow him to get his tools, so we got in the Volvo, and he got in his truck. We followed him across town to an alley behind some stores. At this point Moriah and I were slightly concerned, once again heading into cheesy horror movie territory, but we were desperate. We just wanted to get the hell out of Barstow. We had already spent several hours more than we wanted to in that town. We parked, and the guy goes into a camouflage-painted door. After sitting on the hood of Moriah’s car for about 5 minutes, we decided that we should follow him.
We walked through the door, and found ourselves in the back room of a Military Surplus store. We continue on into the store and see a Native American man sitting at a desk putting a pistol back together. We really didn’t think that this encounter could get much weirder. The man from under the pickup truck continued to work on the Volvo, but decided that it was not the spark plugs after all. This time it was a bad pick-up coil. This is a good thing, because that is an easily replaceable part. Moriah called Autozone and all of the other car part stores in Barstow (which is about 3)
None of them had the part she needed.
Useless.
We browsed around the military surplus store for a moment, and the Native American man and the man from under the pickup truck showed us a knife that had evidently been used to cut off the head of an Iraqi Insurgent.
We decided that it was time to leave.
Back at the Greyhound station, feeling completely hopeless, we decided to start calling some rental car companies in Barstow. At this point it was about 2:30 or so. All of the rental car places in Barstow closed at noon.
Useless.
The nearest open rental car place was 100 miles away, in Ontario, California. We decided that it was high time we get out of Barstow, so we called Triple A again to make use of Moriah’s second and last free 100 mile tow. About 15-20 minutes later, Damien, a local tow truck driver showed up to rescue us. He hooked the Volvo up to his truck, and off we went.
Who would have thought that we would have been ferried out of hell by Damien himself?
It was a little bit over an hour drive from Barstow to Ontario, so we passed the time by recounting the events of the day up to this point to Damien. Damien told us that many of the current residents of Barstow didn’t intend to stay there in the first place. They ran in to car trouble, or financial trouble, and got themselves stuck in that god-forsaken town. I guess we were lucky to escape.
Damien dropped us and the P.O.S. car off at the Ontario airport, and we thanked him and wished him luck in Barstow.
We began talking to the different rental car companies looking for someone that would rent to us for a decent price. The fact that Moriah and I were both under 25 posed an issue. Hertz, however, will let you rent a car under 25 if you pay them a somewhat exorbitant fee. Whatever. We just wanted to get back on the road.
I filled out the Hertz paperwork, and we were going to get a brand new Mustang Convertible with Sirius Sattelite Radio. Finally! Something is going our way.
I handed my debit card to the Hertz lady, and she swiped it through her terminal.
Declined.
Bank of America, in their infinite wisdom, had frozen my account due to “Unusual Activity”
Fan-Fucking-Tastic.
We were just about ready to give up when the lady at the Hertz counter said “There is a guy here in town that I refer customers to when I can’t help them. He’ll pick you up and take you to his office and rent you a car.”
Why not? We had already tried every other scheme we could imagine to try and escape. Lets give this a shot.
A little while later, a short wobbly man with bad teeth showed up in a 1984 Honda. This is the guy that is renting us a car? It seems like things are going to get worse before they get better.
At the Sunshine Rent-A-Car office, we filled out paperwork and rented ourselves a brand new Toyota Corolla. Finally, we’re going to escape!
As we drove the 450 miles to San Francisco, we started noticing things about the car. For example, it had one headlight. The airbag had been deployed at some point, so the Airbag light remained on in the dash-board. The god damned thing had a MUFFLER, and a body kit that didn’t really fit the car. The window cranks popped off if you rolled down the window too vigorously. Oh yeah, and it had one Ford hubcap.
There is no way this thing was brand new.
I opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the owner’s manual. It was a 2005 Toyota Corolla. But dammit, this thing got us to from Ontario to San Francisco on one tank of gas.
This trip from Las Vegas to San Francisco should have taken 8 hours. It took us 19 hours.
This was the road trip from hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment