On Saturday night, we were at our good friend's house, having a little going away get together of sorts. Nothing crazy, just about a dozen friends, eating food and spending some time together before we go our separate ways for a while. Our friends live up in the hills of Oakland, not the super rich hills, but the hills nonetheless. I, Liz, decided to call it an early night, as Sunday was going to be a busy day, and I like to stay on point when getting ready for a trip. Around 1:00am, I declared it my bedtime, offered rides to anyone who needed or wanted one as I was the driver for the night, said goodbye to loved ones, expecting to be leaving in two days time, and walked out the front door. What did I discover? My car was gone. Stolen. And, it's not even really my car. You see, I had been car sitting for our friend while she is out of state. I've had the car since April, and never has a problem occurred, so you can see my aggravation that literally just as we are trying to leave the country, we now have this to deal with. What's more, is that since I am not the registered owner of the vehicle, it was a less than pleasant experience reporting the car stolen to Oakland Police Department. OPD can't report a car stolen by anyone other then registered owner, and the registered owner needs to be present to file the report. So at 4:30am, after waiting three and half hours for an officer to respond to the call, I was told there was nothing he could do, and that my best bet was to do what the dispatcher had told me at 1:00am, which was to have my friend get something in writing notarized, saying that I had her permission to drive the car. I had to take this notarized document to OPD on Sunday to file the report.
So, after a lot of tears, frustration, a lack of sleep, and a set back in travel preparations, not to mention a missed birthday party for a one year old, we found ourselves a little shaky Monday morning to get back on track to leave. There were still things to do! And a lot of them. So we began plugging along again, packing up every last thing, storing all the remaining important pieces of our lives, one more night with more friends and family, the dogs trip to the vet for Good Health Certificates, and then......more car trouble. Our Yukon had an engine light come on with the error code of cylinder 5 misfiring. Oh great.
What does it all mean? Is there a greater message in the events or are they random? When things go wrong, the first impulse is to find the underlying sign, the reason things are unfolding in this manner. But maybe there is no greater meaning, maybe it's all just chaos theory, like Jeff Goldblum so eloquently describes in Jurassic Park. We did our best to stay positive, to realize that if we couldn't handle some bumps in the road now, in the comfort of this place we've come to call home, how would we fair with difficulties on the road, of which there will be many. We forged ahead.
Silver lining: We took the car down to my good mechanic Stan, at 5th Street Garage, perhaps the most kind and honest mechanic the world has ever known. He hooked the car up to his little electric gadget that reads the computer chip in the car and surmised that the flaw is in the error code, not the cylinder itself. He reset it, told us to drive if for a day or two, bring it back and as long as the light hasn't come back on, we should be good to go. No charge for this service and mostly, peace of mind. So, we have two days to kill, even though we are ready to go and my thoughts are this, we've been moving too fast. OPD has an 80% recovery rate of stolen cars, so the good news is if we stay around for a few more days, I might get a phone call saying the car has been found, which is great for everyone involved. Also, some important mail has yet to arrive and while I can leave without it, I would rather be here for it. That being said, a few more days isn't the worst thing ever, just a reminder that things happen at their own speed, and you can't control the timing of everything. And if I can't learn that here and now, I'm doomed in Central America, where time has it's own agenda and won't care what I think or feel about it.
The theme song for today? Inaudible Melodies by Jack Johnson. This was a very important song for me in my early college years and I think it's fitting that it has been stuck in my head all morning, reminding me that this is not a race, this is life, and it's meant to be enjoyed, highs and lows, good times and bad. Relish in all of it, because as my good friend Benny so aptly put it once, "It's not always gonna be like this". The reason all of this is happening, is to make us slow down, take a breath, and leave here leisurely, completely ready, not rushed and panicked, hoping we remembered to do everything we wanted to. We have more time, and this is never really a bad thing, just a chance to make better use of the time you have been given.
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