Other people are catalysts for me, especially if they've got people skills. Coincidences and accidents and blunders are catalysts. When they happen (usually via car trouble), I appreciate them for the people I get to meet. As well as curse them for saddling my car with another Band Aid.
I needed to learn how to do this myself. I wasn't going to subject myself for a mute week in another continent. It'd be like buying a telescope and leaving the lens cap on. Or going to Vegas when you don't gamble or drink (which I've done twice now). How I would learn it, I didn't know. In video games it's always easy: just walk up to them, hit the Talk button, and the people talk to you. Where the Talk button is in real life, I don't know. Reason #417 video games are better than real life.
The Friday after this conversation I was driving up to Knox, NY for a cave rescue weekend. There's only a cave rescue once every year and a half in this part of the country, but someone's life could be at stake if people don't know how to do it. It's about three hours from where I work in Fort Lee, so I was looking to hit Knox by 8:00.
I was working off of Mapquest directions, which means a treasure map. All Mapquest directions are technically correct in some sense, the same way "Light in girth or you'll be eat by the earth" means watch out for quicksand. Mapquest'll tell you to make slight right turns onto roads without giving the road name, or give you convoluted directions when shorter routes are available. If highway signs seem to disagree with Mapquest, then either way you go, you're risking the next twenty minutes of your life in U-turns. When you finally reach your destination, it's like finding El Dorado.
I had lost forty minutes so far, and was somewhere past the evil sounding town of Ravena. My radio cut out, for a few seconds, then returned. Maybe I drove by a mountain. I made a wrong turn, so I K-turned in the middle of the road and retraced. The radio cut out again. And a third time. I turned it off. Hopefully this wasn't the battery's last gasp..
I came up to a red light, and the engine shut down. Oh turds. I threw the car in park and pushed it out of the traffic lane. A big semi filled the space. "You OK?" the driver yelled down.
A knee jerk reaction kicked in. "No, I'm fine." I clearly wasn't, but the automatic reflex to do everything by myself screwed me out of a jump. Maybe this is why I never talk to people.
The last time my car died, it took three hours for a tow truck to arrive. And once he did, he hooked the car up to the bed wrong and smashed it. That was in New Jersey, as populated as a Calcutta clown car. Upstate New York has a lot fewer phones, and a lot fewer tow trucks. It might be all night before my car gets totaled.
I had a spare car battery in the trunk. It was completely dead, as far as I knew; I only had it around to spare my garbageman a hernia and a landfill some leaking chemicals. I didn't have the tools to switch batteries (or even knew if tools were required to change batteries) but maybe I could jump my battery off of the trunk one. I hooked up the alligator clamps, and got no spark of any kind. I'd have better luck rubbing my socks on the floor mat.
A couple of what looked like high school kids saw my clamps and asked if I needed a jump. I wised up and said yes this time. They quickly swung the car around to within clamp range. Their names were Chris and Brandy. A minute on their battery, and my car started. I asked them if they knew someone who could look at it, and they said a NAPA was five miles away, back in Ravena. I thanked them, jumped in my car, and floored it toward NAPA.
As I turned into the NAPA lot, my engine died a second time. The momentum carried me to a parking space. It was 8:00, and the place closed at 7:00. Nuts. There was only one truck in the lot, with its windows down. I hoped it was an employee working late. I walked around to the back, and found a guy sweeping up. He looked up, saw me, screamed and dropped his broom.
"You scared the *@! out of me!" he said, and then spent the next two minutes apologizing for screaming. I was apologizing for scaring him, so it was pretty much useless conversation, until I asked if I could still buy something. He said no problem, so we went in the store through the back. His name was Mike. I figured the battery was probably crapped out, so I bought a new battery. Mike said he'd be able to install it on the spot.
I popped the hood, and Mike said "Here's part of the problem." The alternator belt was snapped. Mike was being very helpful, so I didn't bother with returning the battery. I just added a 9 dollar alternator belt to the purchase.
I needed a wrench to adjust the alternator so the belt would fit. "George can put it on, if you offer him a six pack. George is a nice guy, really," Mike said, in a way that informed me that George's short term actions would not clue me into this fact.
George worked next door in a custom garage, with two or three very nice looking hot rods up on the lifts. We wandered in and found it empty. "He's not here. Must be eating." We walked to the ice cream shop across the street, where George had a sandwich. He said he'd help out as soon as he finished eating. I don't even know who's in the office next to mine at work, much less where they go for meals.
While I waited for George, I tried getting the belt on the alternator myself. It looked like a big rubber band, so maybe I could stretch it on. It had no stretch whatsoever. I waited and watched the sunlight slowly fade away. George eventually came out of the ice cream shop, crossed the street, and walked into his garage without giving me a look.
Mike ran in to check. "He's finishing his sandwich in there. He said to drive the car around to the side door." At least I wasn't putting George out any.
The car was all of forty feet from the side door, but I needed another jump to drive it the distance. The alligator clamps were a heap on my passenger seat, so I whipped them out and hooked them up to the brand new battery. No good. Mike said he knew something George had for jumps. He went in the garage, and came back with a heavy gray box with alligator clamps on the sides. Unfortunately, it had as much juice as a Snapple: maybe 3%. Another dud jump. Mike swung his open-windowed truck around, giving me a jump from his battery. It didn't take. The truck battery's contacts were the size of popcorn kernels, and the clamps had slipped off. A second, more secure placing of them finally connected my battery to something stronger than it, and I got my car started.
A large trailer had blocked the side door. The garage doors of George's garage both had NO PARKING signs. I pulled the car up a whole two spaces from where I got it jumped. I hated to put George out, but he'd have to walk the twenty feet.
George finally opened one of his garage doors and took a look under my hood. Up close, he looked like Kevin Smith: short and fat with a well trimmed beard.. He had a friend with him (the trailer owner), who ironically was silent most of the time.
Every sentence George said seemed to alternate between variations on eight sentences.
The alternator needed a bolt or two to be loosened so it could slide down and allow the belt to get hooked in. George easily eyeballed the size of wrench he needed. The bolts were rusted pretty well, so it was taking an effort to get even one loose.
I was standing with a flashlight over the engine, so I tried engaging George in conversation. I figured a car guy would like to hear about how my car got wrecked by a tow truck driver, but I couldn't get three words into the story before "See that guy? He's gay." OK, no long stories. Little quips only, same stuff that he was tossing to me. I mentioned that I was up here from New Jersey, a nice fat meatball for anyone trying to make a joke. "What are you, a sheepherder?"
I asked him what sort of beer he liked. "Corona." Success! Now to continue the trend. I mentioned that I was up here for a cave rescue course. Time for irony: the guy getting rescued is learning how to rescue others. "What're you, in school? I got socks older than you." This was like having a conversation with a tape recorder. Beer must have just been a soft spot. Too bad I didn't drink, or else we'd have something to talk about.
Ten minutes of grunting, and the alternator finally slid down. I tried the occasional stab at talking to him in this time, but it was like playing follow the leader with a squirrel. The belt went around, the alternator was lifted, and tightened back into place. I was good to go, except for that pesky dead battery.
We tried a jump or two with the gray box, but it was a dead as it was before. "I got something. We'll take care of you." George went into the garage, returning with a massive jumper on wheels, the size of a file cabinet. It did the job great. My sixth battery jump in a hour or so. The jumper was standing in front of my hood. "Don't hit this when you leave, it's $300 and I'll beat your ass for it."
There was someone passing behind me. "I'll just back up and hit that guy. He only looks about $250."
He laughed, a little one but a real one. "That's why they pay you the big bucks." Success. Should have figured homicide as well as beer. Not bad work for a sheepherder.
I felt like I owed them something, but figured money wasn't the way to repay it. I had passed a Grand Union as I came up here, so I decided to drive back to it and use that distance as recharging time. It was all of 100 yards from George's garage, so I had to do circles in the parking lot for ten minutes before daring to shut off the engine. I popped in and found the beer aisle. I bought a chilled twelve pack of Corona.
Back in the parking lot, I said a prayer, turned the key, and the engine started. I did five more minutes of circles, just in case the single start had neatly drained the battery. After a sufficient stoking, I drove back to George's, and found it closed. No lights in the garage, no doors open, and no car or trailer in sight. Great: instead of triumphantly returning with the makings of a drunken fun evening, I just leave like a New Jersey jackass.
Well, pay it forward. The cavers at the rescue weekend would enjoy a 12-pack of free quality beer. Hell, they'd erect statues to me. I was twenty minutes from where I was camping, but it took an hour, thanks to Mapquest and the creative sign placements of Albany County. At 11:15, I found El Dorado (represented that particular day by a tent in a field behind a firehouse). An old guy with a white tumbleweed beard said hi. I asked him if he liked Corona. "Not this late at night," he said, the polar opposite of my current grotto, where people will literally skip sleep for entire weekends just to gain drinking time. The firehouse was locked, so I left the beer outside, hoping for a night cold enough that the beer wouldn't skunk.
If going to another country would be like that breakdown, I'd leave tomorrow. I wouldn't have any plans I'd be sticking to, so I wouldn't mind the unexpected detours. I met great people, experienced a little of what small town life is like, and came away with a story better than "... and then I saw the Eiffel Tower, and then I saw Notre Dame, and then I saw the Mona Lisa..." Eventless trips make for boring stories, and meeting new people is always an event. Thanks to the friendly people of Ravena, NY and a piss poor alternator belt for making a boring drive more interesting.
Despite my beer not getting drunk that night, I managed to pay it forward to one anonymous member of Albany County that weekend.