Plans Change

On a trip like this, travel plans often change. We are nearing the end of a 3 day delay in going from Ohio to Pennsylvania and eventually New York. Patti and I had just finished leading a freshman backpacking trip for Ohio Wesleyan University in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky when we started out on our way to Harrisburg. It would have been the first stop in a truly familiar place in nearly 6 weeks. Unfortunately, the car had other plans for us. On the east side of Columbus the battery light came on, which typically means only one thing - the alternator. Diesel engines don't use a lot of electric power to run since they don't have spark plugs, so we were able to drive it to a nearby Volkswagen dealership. Sadly, this dealership turned out to be like all Volkswagen dealerships, in that they were absolutely worthless when it comes to customer service. After explaining our situation and travel plans and hearing that no mechanics were available at 4:54 on Friday, the service receptionist offered to take a look at the car. Too bad for us, that he knew absolutely nothing about cars...

We walked over to the car, popped the hood, and the receptionist started saying things like, "well, there's your battery..." and, "if the battery light and the brake light comes on at the same then it's probably the alternator...." My response was, "sir, the brake light is on because the parking brake is on..." He didn't seemed deterred from talking nonsense or encouraged to help us out. He was able to give us the name of a foreign car repair shop down the street that they send "older" VW's to when they won't work on them. Apparently, that dealership only works on VW's up to 2003 and their mechanics are unable to fix anything older than that.

So, off we were for a very tense drive a few miles down the road not knowing how long we had on the battery before the car would just stop running. We made it to Blagoi's International Car Service at 5:15, and there we met the nicest mechanic I've ever talked to. I explained what had happened and he looked at the car right away. He hooked the battery up to the meter and said right away we need a new alternator. He asked us how far we were trying to go that day. I said Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and his response was an accented "Oh shit.... there's not much I can do until Monday." He was able to locate a replacement that would arrive on Monday and promised that by about noon we could be on our way again. The shop was not in the nicest neighborhood so he offered to keep the car in the garage instead of in the lot. We called some friends, who happened to be just down the road at the time to ask if they didn't mind house guests until Monday. They came right over and picked us up, and we passed the time chatting with our Macedonian mechanic.

Our friends Ryan and Annie were on their way to dinner with some other friends when they picked us up. Our string of good luck continued because Bryan and Nadia didn't mind a few extra dinner guests. They turned out to be awesome people and we had the most amazing conversation for hours. Nadia made a great Italian pasta salad for dinner and we all shared a few bottles of good wine. I should just say again that they were awesome people. Bryan was a coworker of Annie's at a charter school for inner city kids. The school's goal is to send kids to college early to start an associate's degree, and Bryan's role there is to help prepare them for college and coach them to succeed once there. In addition, he's a fairly incredible hip hop artist and has a Master's in comparative cultural studies. He did some fascinating work on "El Negro" who was essentially an African who was stolen from his African grave, stuffed, and sent to Spain to be put on display for nearly 100 years - up until 1997. Just before the Barcelona Olympics there was a big push to repatriate the body, but no one was sure where he actually came from. Botswana eventually agreed to accept the body and give him a state burial. That's not quite the end of the story, but Bryan had some fascinating things to say about the development of the idea of race and the "scientific" theories used to reinforce those ideas. Nadia is an Italian teacher by day but recently began working with sex slaves in the Columbus area. I did not know it until Friday, but Toledo, Ohio is one of the worst places in America for kidnapping and forced prostitution. Young girls are kidnapped from Toledo, shipped all over Ohio and the US. Nadia is working with a fledgling organization called Rahab's Hideaway to rescue and offer refuge to these girls.

It was simply an amazing night of conversation. It was incredible to have such richness and depth to a conversation with people we had met literally moments before, and it was wonderful to be with Ryan and Annie since we haven't spent a ton of time together before this weekend. Ryan and I have done a few long wilderness trips, but this was the first real time that the four of us have been able to spend together. I wish it didn't take a new alternator to get us there, but it has been great to be with such good friends.

Tomorow we'll pick up the car where and get back on our way to Harrisburg. Our road trip is finally coming to an end.