Roadside Assistance

Today was great.  All of it.  Liz and I spent the day with Fuse and her friend Ines touring the Alsace, a really picturesque region in northeastern France.  We visited Strasbourg and the tiny village of Riquewihr, then had a stereotypical “French picnic” on the shore of a river in Kaysersberg—a baguette, a wheel of brie, grapes, and French wine, and we were set.  In a word, perfection.

But it wouldn’t be a true adventure if everything went right all day long.  So as we were coming home over the mountains of the Vosges, we ran into car trouble.  Thankfully it happened going down the mountain, rather than up it, because suddenly Fuse found that she was unable to put the car in gear…any gear.  We were just coasting down the hill. 

So when the road leveled out, we pulled over and started making phone calls.  First a call to Fuse’s dad in the States.  After a description of the problem, it became pretty clear that the clutch had gone out.  Then a call to Guillaume, of course, and finally a call to their insurance company. 

Now, we’d been feeling a little bit stuck, because 1) we were over an hour away from home when this happened, and 2) it was almost 9:00pm, and the last train for Nancy had left a nearby town about an hour before.  Soooo we weren’t really sure how much the trip home was going to cost us.

Luckily, though, it turns out that Fuse and Guillaume have roadside assistance.  The tow to a nearby garage and a taxi ride home for us would be covered, and we wouldn’t have to pay a dime for that! 
Our spirits lifted considerably. 

After waiting what seemed like quite a while, the tow truck arrived.  Since there were 4 of us, the driver informed us that we wouldn’t all fit in his cab, and 2 of us would have to ride in the car.  We said (or perhaps just thought and didn’t vocalize), who wants to ride up front? We all rode in the car.

You know what’s really fun?  Sitting in a car that’s facing backwards and attached to the bed of a tow truck and watching the world go by.  And waving at the kind townspeople sitting outside who were definitely laughing with us.  They seemed as happy as we were.    


So, we got back to Nancy about an hour later than planned, and Fuse and Guillaume will have to deal with getting their car fixed and paying for it, but even so, I think everyone along today would agree that today was pretty great anyway.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more