I drive a 1990 Ford Ranger. He’s a good truck, however tempermental. He has a good engine, though he really doesn’t like to go over 20 miles per hour for the first twenty minutes he’s driving, especially in cooler weather. He also doesn’t like it when we call him “Little Guy”, which unfortunately is his name.
The other day he got his front left wheel stuck on a train track. A busy train track. Surrounded by rocks. The trains using this train track have been waking me up for days now–at all hours of the night. It is now four a.m., and I am confident that I, my roommate, and my vehicle, are in danger of annihilation.
I assure you, this situation has nothing to do with me, the driver. And everything to do with Little Guy’s negative attitude. He thought he’d get to see the ocean from his spot in the Ventura County Fair parking lot, and unfortunately this didn’t turn out to be the case.
Regardless, here I am, without a room in Ventura, and my truck is stuck on the train tracks. I may or may not be partially drunk. The tires are spinning, I can smell the rubber in the cab. I am definitely nearly hysterical. The truck won’t move, and we empirically ascertain that a truck just too heavy to lift.
Finally I insist on calling the police. My roommate insists on leaving. It turns out, for whatever reason, that she’s on probation. Not that I would hold that against anyone. I might, however, hold it against her that she lost the key to the motel room that we paid for in cash. She must have lost it in the motel parking lot, for only that could explain how the people who were in our room had gotten in there. It was her birthday though, and I incurred my portion of the two hundred dollar loss in respect for her continual existence.
A long story short, miracles happen, and Little Guy, however scarred, is freed from the train tracks. No one died, however perilous the evening. And the five hour stay in a motel that night only cost me a mere hundred and sixty dollars.
As young as I might be, I will never trust anyone else with travel arrangements. That is my lesson. That and train tracks are actually quite tall. Who knew?
Tonight a fellow says to me, “You look like a train ran you over.” I found the irony hilarious, though he was merely referring to my obvious exhaustion.
