Going to Terry’s and Sandy’s House

Fridays are the party days! Stepanka picked me up at work and we drove directly home to prepare for our farewell party our friends were organizing for us. I love Stepanka picking me up from work. We talk a lot when we drive and it is a great way for me to finally shut down all the information processing loops in my head, log off from the work related stuff, and start living my life again (yes, I am an engineer). This time wasn’t any different and we were discussing the upcoming party and things that happened that day. Stepanka also mentioned hearing some new noises coming from our car, which I did not pay too much attention to, since Stepanka understands the girl’s world and I do the men’s world. And cars are definitely the job the real men like me understand best. And nothing can change it. Not even Stepanka filling oil to our car or changing the radiator with me (those are no fictional events, everything actually happened). So we drove home, changed, and rushed to meet with Carl, Ellen, and Barbara, who we would follow to Terry’s and Sandy’s house, where the party took place and which was about 30-minute drive from our apartment. Everything went according to the plan, Carl gave us a couple of instructions, and we hit the road (I-430) full of excitement. We had been driving for about five minutes following Ellen’s van when suddenly horrible knocking noise started coming from our engine. Our faces froze, I managed to flash my lights on Carl in front of us, and we were slowly drifting to the side of the highway. The side you never want to be and the side where all these people end up standing next to their broken cars and finally having a good reason to use their cell phones. Our 91 Toyota Tercel died unexpectedly one week before our departure to the Czech Republic and after having served us without any major problems for six years. The car was able to start, but the engine would die immediately unless you kept it really turning. I opened the hood while Carl was slowly backing up to us. The noise coming from the car was really scary. Carl was suggesting calling the towing service to bring it to the machine shop he usually takes their cars to. I wanted to try to get to the machine shop driving. Carl, a very calm guy, one of the elders in my church, and a some sort of director with responsibility for an electrical company for the whole Arkansas (sorry, I do not know precisely, since he is also modest), so he probably knew a towing service would be better idea, but what wouldn’t you do for a young fellow who wants to learn his lesson, right? My wife went to Carl’s and Ellen’s car, we started the engines, left the pity zone on the side of the highway and were heading to the machine shop. The drive was a piece of cake. The car kept doing this horrible noise, the engine died a couple of times, and I was enjoying all the attention I was getting from the people passing by. All stops at the intersections were a procedure of itself with shifting to neutral, keeping the revolutions high, waiting for the green light listening to a metal-on-metal knocking noise, then shifting to the drive gear, a squeaking noise from the tires, a little bit of burning rubber smell, and here we go. I do not remember people keeping so much distance around my car since the summer of 2005 when I was backing up with a loaded U-haul truck and a trailer from a dead end street in St. Louis. I will write about it some day later. This time, nobody got hurt and we almost made it. My car refused to start at the bottom of a hill, on top of which the machine shop was located. Carl noticed I finally reached the point of learning the rule of not pushing things too hard, he turned around and parked right behind my rear bumper. “I can push you on the hill. The machine shop is right behind it.” And so we were climbing slowly onto that hill and our car got a final push at the top and quietly glided to the parking lot in front of the machine shop. We left the car there and drove to the party together with the Monroes and Barbara. The guys from the machine shop will call on Monday to tell us the verdict. Besides helping us with our broken car, Carl and Ellen graciously offered us to borrow one of their cars for the rest of the week and we thankfully accepted. I will miss our car once we leave the US. Stepanka and I have a lot of great memories related to it that I am sure and hope to think about from time to time. The people from my church and their help we received on our last Toyota day I will never forget.