Where to begin... Well, with Silverstein's demise we needed to find a quick replacement. We would have used our other van, but it has seen better days. Some kind people sold us a 1994 Pontiac TranSport for $2 - but getting insurance for it was a nightmare. That could be due to the age of the vehicle and the number of kilometers beyond 300,000 it has endured. All of this meant that I left Faith with a lemon named Marvan the Martian and Phoebe, our beloved 2003 Chevy Venture, was parked at the church and required a diaper for the leak in the power steering while I was in Peru. It was awful. And it was about to get more bizarre.
Faith's parents were still recovering from their experience with our van going boom. And when we had last left them, their car was in the shop. It was not starting consistently in warm weather. So they were relying on the pick-up in the meantime. Well, someone went to the bank after visiting the doctor in Calgary and locked the keys in the only available vehicle. I will not mention any names. The next morning it was professionally broken into in order to retrieve said keys.
Marvin then went for an inspection that left him temporarily sidelined. It was a wonderful moment of unicorns leaping gaily over rainbows into fields of Skittles. By the time the vehicle was inspected, the temporary insurance was running out and the van and Faith and the kids were stranded with it in Innisfail.
But we're just getting started. Faith's parents' car was still acting up on occasion, but not often enough that one would not have faith in it's general reliability. So the ladies in the family went into Red Deer for some purpose and stopped at McDonalds for dollar drinks on their way home. Those alluring cold beverages made the car jealous and so it went on strike. It needed to cool down. AMA memberships are great, and being Plus members has its perks. Just flash your license and card at any scene and get rapid results. Sometimes. After 6 boost attempts and a few changes in methods and means, the Impala chose to cooperate. It was swiftly sent to a garage where they replaced the starter.
The kids and Faith were having some grand adventures. On the way home from Camp Little Red, Marvin ran out of gas on the QE2 Highway just before the Innisfail overpass. Not only does it not have one of those handy reminder alerts, it was still reading one quarter of a tank when it sputtered out in desperation. Faith's mom came with the car that was O-so-reliable and rescued the stranded motorists. Joy came later that day with a jerry can of fuel. Faith walked in the waist high grass in the rain across the ditches to get the beast running (I call it our Assault Tank) and got wet. Very wet.
The day the car came out of the shop, it was on an errand to the No Frills supermarket when it again refused to start. This was with the new starter and belief that it was probably fine. It wasn't. What could it be? Uh, a dying car? Computers only last so long. Ask Faith's last laptop that croaked just before I left for Peru as well.
In Peru things weren't much better. Our driver got lost in the middle of the Andes so we were over an hour late for the youth camp we were running. And our driver had an interesting habit of picking up hitchhikers. Just before that, our train tickets weren't all in the same car and I was separated from the rest of the team for four hours. At least it was me - we snuck two team members onto the right car before getting scolded in Spanish by the station master who didn't understand our predicament. Because of this, I got kicked off into the next car. What was cool is that I got to perform that stunt where you move from one car to another while the train is moving across the car couplings. And tried to converse with an Icelandic tourist in French and English.
Others on our team took the only functional vehicle from the organization we were working with and had an adventure. Turning left, they got hit on the driver's door panel by a police vehicle who passed while they were turning. Some unintelligible words were exchanged and an amount was settled on for 'damages' and they went on their way. Did I mention the person driving had left their International Drivers License at the compound? The same vehicle overheated and blew a hose in consecutive outings the same day and was repaired in the middle of the street - which is one thing in North America and something completely else in the Southern Hemisphere. At least my guitar made it back to Canada this time.
Needless to say, I arrived home at midnight to my loving family who arrived in style. Faith acquired a rental vehicle on a long weekend Monday from the only rental agency open in Red Deer on said day. It was the only vehicle they had. She asked for a compact. They got a fully loaded black Chrysler 300 for the same price. We called it the Batmobile. It was returned within the next day or so. And then the search was on for some 'new' wheels.
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