So this weekend was Stoner Dave's wedding weekend. It seemed like a good idea at the time to take Dara (the MK4 VW) down to Savannah because she was the newest of the fleet in the garage (plus it was due time to pimp ze auto in my old school town right?) so away we went on Friday morning. All was fine. She made the 600+ mile trip with flying colors until we made it to Dave's house and noticed that the belt tensioner was running what appeared to be "dry" sounding. Ok, fine, something to check out when we get home and probably replace. Simple and easy three bolt maneuver. Until the next morning I noticed a slow oil leak. Great, the oil cooler's seal took a shit and was now pissing oil at the rate of an 89 year old's urine flow. Ok, be sure to check that too.

So for the rest of the weekend we took it slow. Dara received some Stop Leak™, which seemed to work like a charm and for the rest of the day, we took Dave's new Boxster around town (which is a great little car and I can officially deem it a Por-sha not a Porsch. (p.s. THANKS DAVE!)

So, the wedding was great, Kate and I have baby fever now and at 8am at the asscrack of dawn, we pushed Dara out of the garage and started her up so we wouldn't wake anyone up. We were on our way. I will give her credit, she drove like a champ. Not a drip to be seen. Four hours into the trip it happened; about 5 minutes after I switched with Kate, she woke me up to "Jason, she's smoking."

I woke up and looked in the side view to see that she was now pouring out smoke from the ass end. We pulled over, popped the hood to see what I feared most... the belt tensioner siezed and the belt was snapped in half. Just 30 miles shy of the VA border but officially in the middle of BUMBLE FUCK NORTH CAROLINA. Wonderful.



"Wait, what? $870 bones to tow to VA?!"




"Yeah dude, we're fuX0red..."


Luckily we signed up for AAA on Friday night in the event that this would happen but seeing how we were in the middle of nowhere, those 3 free tow miles wouldn't really be helping us at this point. Kate suggested I call VW roadside assistance (THANK YOU VW for the second time) and within an hour, Robby the 400 pound tow truck driver, was happily tearing off my front bumper on the flat bed to take us deeper in what we would now coin "Kiss Your Anal Virginity Goodbye", North Carolina.



An hour later, after learning about the delicacies of tow truck driving, lawn preening and other items of fancy, Robby delivered us to the wonderfully out of the way VW dealership in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Now, if you are keeping score, this took us 80 miles+ AWAY from our final destination (see figure 1)

(Figure 1)

editors note: This awesome map was created on a laptop sans mouse so kiss my ass, Photoshop is a bitch without mouse buttons)

Anyhoo, on with our story. Here, take a look at this photo:


Look's like a VW dealer across what seems to be a busy highway. Well, if you guessed that, then you are totally right. Not only is it a a VW dealer that is across from a busy highway, it's a CLOSED VW dealer across from a busy highway that is surrounded by a FENCE. The next photo you are about to see is Kate and I walking around the busy highway, under a bridge, down a busy on-ramp and past a mile of two-lane road to a hotel in the middle of nowhere.

Well, that was totally fun!


Here we are checking in at a no lie, really nice Comfort Suites (who still have the counter mats I designed at my first job... rock! haha) hotel for the paltry sum of 89$ bucks a night. We have a king size bed, all the ice we can eat and free wi-fi. The front desk lady is a blogger herself and told us of what we could drink next door at the local Outback that would fuck us up the quickest. God bless that gal *winks*


Here we are damning everyone.


Here we are after a 22 oz. Blue Moon a piece.


Now, I bet you all are probably thinking the night would end there. Kate and I would get drunk, we would go back to the hotel where I would unsuccessfully try to have sex with her belly button in a drunken stupor and that would be that right? Oh no, it gets better of course.

This is Amy. That's not really her real name but it will do for the stories sake. She's a waitress at good 'ole Outback. She's 20 years old and throughout the night Kate and I got to hear her life story. It was kind of odd just asking a total stranger what her deal was but seeing how this day couldn't get any weirder, it wasn't going to hurt to be nosey. Plus, it just adds to great material for the blog and it's loyal readers. Anyways, Amy is the typical small town gal who got herself into a little bit of trouble here and there, got mixed up with the typical "asshole BF" and has now retreated back home to lick her wounds. She wants to be an interior designer and if she could live anywhere, it would be Hawaii.



Who knows if she will make it out of this town but if she reads this (and she better *shakes fist), drop me a line as we would love to hear more. (Have we found a replacement for Tara folks?)

Anyways, we kept drinking...


Kate, of course, got crunked out.


And I drank some more.


We stumbled home to the hotel which was all of 21 feet from where we ate, kate is on the DS in bed and I'm typin' away because that's pretty much all we can do right now. Well, this or we can hop the fence, run over 6 lanes of highway, hop another fence and go buy some shit at the Wal Mart Super Center. *sigh* Man I miss the city already.

Tomorrow we find out if Dara can be fixed post haste and then it's back to civilization for us. This has been the longest road trip of all time but it's way radder than sitting at home I suppose.

To be continued...