An Anecdote about Getting to Missouri

Three days after returning from my most recent trip to Haiti (which was INCREDIBLE, more on that in later blog posts), I loaded up my car with my junk (once again) and drove drove drove across I-76 and I-70 to Missouri. It's about a 14 hour drive.

Hour six (roughly 2pm): central Ohio. My mom and I are cruising down the road, listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audio book (I think we were at the part where Harry, Hermione, and Ron almost get caught by the Deatheaters when they apparate into Hogsmeade -  a pretty intense part! Although most of the book is pretty intense...). All of a sudden it feels like my car pops out of gear and revs real loud. Mind you, we're going 70mp and while there's not a lot of traffic, there are some other cars around. I try to get my little Hyundai back into 5th but it is just. not. working. I pull off to the side of the road and call AAA. I'm sort of freaking out at this point because I have no idea what's wrong with my car and there are trucks rushing by on the highway and the falling snow slowly, slowly covers my car so that I can't see anything.

Fast forward to my car being towed 40 miles to the nearest place that is open on a Saturday afternoon (apparently all of Ohio shuts down every weekend). My transmission is busted. No autoparts stores will be open until Monday, and then it will be several days after that before my car is ready to go. All my jenk is in my car - what do we do? Tell the auto shop to leave my car outside when they lock up for the day because we'll be back to empty out the car.

Since it's the weekend in Ohio, no rental car places are open except at airports, so my mom and I take an hour long taxi ride to the Columbus airport, get a rental car, and drive back to Zanesville. Pulling up to the now-closed auto shop, it appears they have locked my car in the garage. If you know me at all, this next part will come as no surprise. I start banging on the garage door really, really loud. Then I start banging on the shop door. If anyone is still there, they are sure as heck going to let us in.

It turns out someone was there. Hooray! We load up the rental car and I end up taking every single little thing out of my car just in case we don't go back for it. Mom and I are pretty tired at this point (it's about 10pm and we left at 7am), so we drive a little farther and then get a hotel, driving the rest of the way to St. Louis in the morning. My mom's plane from STL back to Philly was Monday afternoon, so we had to get her to Missouri by then.

So my car was stuck in central Ohio. Eight hours from St. Louis. Six hours from my parent's house. Not near anything with which I am familiar. But fixing a transmission is cheaper than getting a new car, so we get it fixed and all the while are brainstorming ways to get my Hyundai from Zanesville to St. Louis.

In the end, I took an overnight greyhound bus. In Europe, doing things like this is exotic and romantic. When I took the midnight train from Madrid to Paris, it was exciting because I was going from Madrid to Paris. Oooooo. This was decidedly not romantic. Or exotic. At all. However, this trip did provide me with excellent people-watching opportunities as well as a chance to practice my ability to sleep on a bus while sharing a pair of seats with a stranger.

After 10 hours on the greyhound, I got to Zanesville, retrieved my car (which I endearingly call Little Red Riding Hood), and drove back to St. Louis (all the while praying that LRRH will last me at least three more years, please God!). It was all very adventuresome and not anything I want to repeat. Ever.

So, yeah. I'm now a brand-new St. Louisan!