The Road Trip North — December 15-19, 2002

This is where I’m going to start my story, on December 15th, 2002, but first I’d like to back it up a day. The day before I hit the road was one last ride with my SoCal Crew. We hooked up down in Long Beach for a three-hour ride along the coast. It couldn’t have been a more perfect morning for a ride — warm and sunny and in great company.

After the ride, we all went to the local watering hole — the Coffee Bean — for post ride drinks and goodies. Betty (aka Boop) had been busy all week baking cookies and I chipped in with some special cookies – they were shaped like M-Dots. My uncle works in sheet metal and he made an M-Dot cookie cutter for me. He’s the coolest. :-) So we sat around telling stories over coffee and cookies. Laurie (aka Rap) was telling me of her adventures when she traveled China for a year. She called it her “year of living dangerously”. What a great adventure she went on. I was hoping my adventure would be just as amazing.

Later that night, my Mom flew down from Vancouver to drive home with me the next morning. I was so happy to see her I got a little teary at the airport.

We had planned to take a little time on the road home — make it a bit of a mini-vacation. We would stop in Santa Barbara for a visit with my friend Bruce (aka Aero) early afternoon, then head to Santa Cruz and hang out there the next day. Then we’d spend a couple days in Oregon visiting with Kate (aka K8Bug), a stop in Everett, WA for lunch with Nik (aka Nik ;-)), and cap it off in Blaine, WA for dinner with Jonathon (aka Iron Otter).

We sort of stuck to the plan. ;-) We got off to a bit of a late start enjoying a leisurely café breakfast with Boop and my Soul Sister, Liz — by the time we made it to Aero’s place, it was 6:30pm. Because we were so behind, we decided to skip Santa Cruz and just boogie on up to K8’s.

We were cruising along nicely, made it through fresh snowfall on Shasta and were humming along in southern Oregon by early evening. My Mom and I were both thinking, but not saying aloud, what a nice little road car my beater was. Fatal even when not spoken! Shortly after, the car did a little sputter. “Oh-oh, what was that?!” Another sputter then the temperature gauge went psycho and the car died.

The unfortunate thing was that we were pulled over on the shoulder of a freeway just outside a bend, in the dark, with no phone, far from anywhere to call for help... The fortunate thing was, there had been an accident on the other side of the freeway and emergency people were in full force. I figured we just overheated, so doing not the smartest thing in the world, we ran across to the other side to see if someone had water. No such luck, so we had to wait until they were all cleaned up with the accident to help us.

Not long after, a State Trooper pulled up with a can of water. Popped the hood and, oh hey, it’s not the water, the car threw a belt — the main belt. Well, at least it was only a belt, but now that meant a tow and an overnight to wherever the nearest town was. The Trooper called a tow truck for us and stuck around for a bit to make sure it was on its way. He didn’t have any flares left to put out for us, so he said he’d come back in a bit to check up on us. As he was walking away he says, “I’m just worried you’ll get whacked out here...”

Uh... gee, thanks for those comforting parting words.

As it turned out, it was much more than a belt — it was the whole AC compressor unit, a triple-digit quote, and a whole day to replace. Ugh! I couldn’t afford that and was a touch upset about it. I was thinking to myself, what the heck is the reason for this?

I always believed that things happen for a reason. Well, after the incident with the car, I tried to find the reason for it. I couldn’t find one in the car breaking down, but I did find one in all the surrounding events and circumstance. Sometimes, some things don’t happen for a reason. They just happen. However, what surrounds those things is for a reason.

The car broke down and cost a bunch of cash I couldn’t really afford. Yes, that sucked. What was good though is that I had my Mom with me; there was help for us immediately; we weren’t far from K8; she was friends with people that pretty much owned the town; and, one of those friends made a call that saw us out of the car dealership paying less than what had been quoted. Come to think of it, they seemed even friendlier. ;-)

I still believe things happen for a reason, just sometimes, the immediate incident is only the catalyst in order for the surrounding events to take place and lessons to be understood.

So, the rest of the road trip was most enjoyable. We spent the day hanging out in a town that I would never have stopped in before — and it was a great little town that I’d like to visit again. We had a wonderful visit with Miss K8 and her husband Max, a nice lunch with Nik and the next night, enjoyed a most excellent dinner with Iron Otter.

All in all, it was a nice little road trip. :-)

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