It's come to my attention that I don't have enough postings. This is the first time in my life that someone's complained that I don't talk enough, so I'm happy to remedy this problem. I've decided to start a miniseries entitled "Homer's Odyssey: Island Girl's Vehicular Mishaps." As you may have noticed, several of my prior posts refer to car problems I've had from time to time here. Well, it's a result of me not being particularly savvy with cars, and because the car care/repair business here is just different. At this point I've accumulated enough entertaining stories that I'll share a few of them with you. Don't worry, I'll still tell you all about my under and above sea adventures here in Palau. But I've found that through my car problems, I've actually learned a lot about "real life" in Palau. Hopefully there stories will highlight that as much as my apparent inability to avoid weekly car debacles.
Prologue: The Old Lady
So far I've owned two cars in Palau. The first was the Old Lady, and the second was Homer. Homer's Odyssey would never have begun if it weren't for my brief stint as the Old Lady's owner.
I definitely miss the Old Lady. She was a 1990 white Toyota Mark II. The interior sported cute Hello Kitty stickers, an AM radio, a cute floral steering wheel cover, and air conditioning that worked. All in all, a pretty sweet situation.
She had her problems though. For one, she was over 20 years old, and for another, she was missing the guard protecting the undercarriage of the car.* As a result, every speed bump, driveway entrance, and pothole were extremely painful for both of us. I found myself coaching her out loud as we went over speed bumps. She also had a lot of trouble starting. I developed a routine of getting into the Old Lady, trying to start it, and then sitting and coaching her for about ten minutes at a time...."Please, Old Lady, I'm really hot and I need to get to work...just start!" And up until she died, it worked every time. We had a nice little system, the Old Lady and I.
But I pushed my luck. I should have known better than to fill her up with gas completely. It was just tempting fate. I put $50 of gas in her, and of course, she died the next day. After work, I headed up to the public pool to teach swim lessons with Veronica, and the Old Lady stopped running twice on my way to the pool. And the pool is about 1.5 miles from the courthouse. Somehow I managed to restart her both times by turning the key and immediately putting her in drive and slamming on the gas. Definitely a stop-gap to say the least. I made it to the pool, we taught swim lessons, and I headed out of the pool lot, just hoping to make it the 1/2 mile to my apartment where I could call a mechanic. Nope! The Old Lady puttered out on the side of the road, about 50 yards away from the pool. The sun had set, but the street lights weren't on, and I had no emergency or parking lights to help me out. What to do?
Turns out, there's an unwritten rule that Palauans just help each other out in these situations. Four Palauan guys that live in my neighborhood came over to my car without batting an eye or saying a word, and pushed my car to the side of the road. Out of nowhere came jumper cables and a second car. That didn't work, and so I got really worried about what I'd do with my car overnight. Not a problem! The guys had pushed the Old Lady to one of their houses, and they just told me not to worry about it and come get it whenever I could. Sweet! So I left it there, headed home, and most likely consumed a large quantity of ice cream.
The next day, after mooching rides from both Ben and Veronica, I called Surangel's Auto Shop--the only place I knew with a tow truck on hand. They picked me up from work and drove to my car. After another unsuccessful jump attempt, they towed her to their repair shop to see if there was any hope. Following a half hour of serious prayer, I learned that her engine was completely "seized up" and fixing it would cost over half of what I'd paid for her. No thanks! But I got lucky. A salesman from Surangel's knew a woman who had a car like mine with a working engine. All she needed was a decent car frame. She was willing to pay me $100 (minus the towing fee, of course). Given that my next best offer was $100 from the junk yard and I'd be responsible for towing it there, I decided to sell my Old Lady to the old lady. Sounds a little off right? But as you'll learn after a few more stories like this, swapping parts--even entire car frames--is par for the course. I like to think that somewhere on this island the Old Ladies are happy together!
After saying goodbye, I set out shopping to find my next victim. I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg, but I wanted something reliable, so I did some shopping around. Meaning I talked to 3 or 4 people and test drove one car. I heard from several people that the owner of a Mobile station's auto shop was reliable and sold cars. So I stopped by one afternoon, and saw him...Homer, a 1996 Honda Odyssey.
(Cue low-pitched whistles.)
I was immediately interested. Do I need a minivan? Absolutely not. Is 1996 pretty old? You bet. Did I really want to get the car buying process over with quickly and avoid paying over $2,000? Absolutely. Obviously, my impatience won out, after some confusing negotiations (Angie doesn't speak English particularly well, and I speak barely any Palauan) and an unconvincing attempt at playing hardball with Ben (I literally kicked the tires at one point), I drove Homer home. And that's where his Odyssey begins....
*This is the first of what will be countless errors in car lingo. I could look up all the proper terminology, but to get an accurate feel of my level of car knowledge, I feel complete honesty will be necessary.
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