Yesterday morning turned out to be quite the little adventure.
After a month or so of taking care of the paperwork and registration and whatnot, Liz and I finally came into a used car, courtesy of my in-laws. The last step was to get the car inspected. We had an appointment for 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
But let’s back up a day. A friend of mine is in from out of town, and it being Friday night, well … the usual mayhem ensued. In total we hit three or four bars (I can’t remember)Yesterday morning turned out to be quite the little adventure.
After a month or so of taking care of the paperwork and registration and whatnot, Liz and I finally came into a used car, courtesy of my in-laws. The last step was to get the car inspected. We had an appointment for 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
But let’s back up a day. A friend of mine is in from out of town, and it being Friday night, well … the usual mayhem ensued. In total we hit three or four bars (I can’t remember), and by night’s end I was pretty sloshed. Also remember that Friday night we had that horrible weather, so getting back to Queens from Manhattan was a bit of an adventure. I got into bed around 12:30 a.m.
When my alarm went off at 6:30 Saturday morning, I think it’s fair to say that I wasn’t even close to being in the mood to deal with the inspection. I was hung over. Bad. I dragged myself out of bed anyway, showered, changed, had a quick breakfast and then bundled up. Because outside the parking lot–and our car–was covered in ice.
It took me a good 15 minutes to chisel the car out as it warmed up, but I finally got the windows clear. Naturally, the tires were dug in so deep that they couldn’t get any traction, so I had to dig them out as well. Finally, we got going.
Liz and I are still learning Queens, so we didn’t know the best way to get to the mechanic, so we relied on MapQuest. And if you’re wondering, yes … that was our first mistake. The directions were kinda right, as long as you don’t count that they had us going the wrong way on a one-way street, in the ice and snow. We know the area a little bit, so we finagled our way through until finally we found our way.
Even after all that, we were only five minutes late, so things were starting to look up.
Except that when we pulled up, the guy out front was shoveling now. I said that we were here for the inspection. He said no inspections today. The machines are frozen. Needless to say I was less than thrilled. He said sorry. Yeah. Like that was going to help me.
And yet here’s where those little bits of kismet come together. I scolded the guy a bit for not calling us to let us know there would be no appointment. He suggested that we try the Sonoco next door, which we did. It was a pretty creepy place.
There’s that really bizarre scene in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis finds himself in the hands of Zed and his very icky buddy. And we all know what happened after that. This gas station was a lot like that. One country song after another playing on the radio, all about Jesus. The place was dirty and creepy. The guy running the place was dirty and creepy too. He was big and fat with a thick scraggly beard that looked like it hadn’t been washed in months. He was wearing a ratty, oily mechanics jump suit with rips in the side. He barely spoke.
But they did the inspection right away and we were done in less than 30 minutes. Thing is, if the other mechanic from the first place had actually done the right thing and called us to cancel the appointment, Liz and I probably would have stayed home, leaving us to deal with the inspection another day. So how about that?
On the way home we actually found a quick way back–only took a few minutes–so bite me Map Quest!
It was a goofy morning indeed, and despite the snow and ice, we were back–with an inspected car–by 9:30. All in all, not too bad. Not too bad at all.
