Days One and Two: Miss Independent...?

It seems that for the duration of my life I've always had someone to depend on for all my basic needs. Growing up, of course, it was my parents and big brother. In college, even when I was living alone in an apartment downtown, I wasn't paying for it. When I moved to Alaska, I found the first controlling handyman I could be codependent with and attached myself to him. Since then, though I was single for a while, I always had someone who wanted to take care of everything for me. There are certain things I never learned to do for myself just because I never needed to, and because the people who did take care of those things for me never took an interest in teaching me.

Now that I'm in a relationship that's freeing and full of all the things that the last one lacked-- respect being the most noticeable-- I'm learning to do things on my own. It's partly because I'm being taught certain things, and it's partly because I'm really interested in learning them and teaching myself.

Now, however, with the advent of my boyfriend Stimee's vacation for 5 weeks to South America, I'm seeing that, although I am not AS dependent on him as I have been on past boyfriends, fiancees, and clingy exes, I have realized in the past two days that I need to grow up and become the independent woman I always pretended to be.

The area in which my lack of expertise became painfully evident during these incredibly long two days is that of automotive maintenance.

After dropping Stimee off at the airport, Bill and I set off to do some shopping in Whitehorse. For non-Skagwegians, Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon and is the closest road-accessible city to Skagway. It's the closest place to drive to to go to the dentist, buy CDs, get any variety in grocery shopping, have a Big Mac and go see a movie. The drive is, in my experience, usually about two hours. The first part of the drive climbs to the White Pass summit, in between US and Canada customs.

On the way back from Whitehorse, Bill noticed a gauge on my dash that I'd never even looked at before. "Is your thermostat broken?" he asked. I looked. It took a minute to even have an idea of what he was talking about, but when I saw it, and understood what "H" and "C" stood for, I wondered. It was all the way to the end of the red section in the "H" side of the gauge, and climbing swiftly past it.

Using a phrase that, in the next 48 hours would be repeated innumerable times, I said, "I don't know anything about cars."

The engine was, indeed, overheating. When it started to make a clanking noise that immediately made me think of Brian Regan's comedy routine, Bill suggested we pull over. When we did, and popped the hood, the engine was smoking and smelled like rubber. Bill -- whose presence was so much appreciated as he knows about cars and I don't -- determined that I had no coolant in the tank. "Oh!" I exclaimed in a tone that said "EUREKA!" "My dad stocked up my trunk before I left New York. I'm sure there's coolant in there."

I found myself sorting through many containers of unfamiliar fluids. Four of them were marked "Motor Oil." One was "Power steering fluid." At this point I felt like a foreigner in a strange country, surveying the shelves of a pharmacy whose bottles are labeled in an unfamiliar language. There was wiper fluid, brake fluid, and a can of Progresso soup, but, as was to be expected, there was no coolant.

I did, however, have a few bottles of water. Bill dumped the contents in the tank and we got the car going again. This time, the meter dropped to about midway between "H" and "C," and the engine noise stopped. At least, it stopped for a little while.

After going through Canada customs, the noise started again. As we climbed to the summit, after which the road would simply wind downhill back into Skagway, the noises intensified. Finally, as I pressed the gas pedal to the floor trying to get it going, the speedometer dropped sadly. 30... 20... 10... 5... and.... stopped. Immediately the car began rolling backward down the hill. I hastily put it in park and sighed.

There were a lot of details at this point as Bill pondered the meaning of my car's ("death wagon," or "death machine," as he called it) demise, that I just dont' remember because, again, it might as well have been a foreign language. One of those details involved the lack of coolant, and another involved the lack of good oil. We ended up getting a ride back into town with a couple who had just moved to Whitehorse. Once back in town, the phone calls started.

My first instinct was to call Doug and Lindsay, which I did multiple times, but they weren't answering their phones. Through them, i thought, I could get in touch with Paul, whose automotive expertise would surely be able to solve whatever was wrong with my car. I called Dirk, who had no ideas. I called Logan, who helped me come up with the solution to call Cody. I called Cody, who said "where are you now? home? I'll be there in 10 minutes." The thought that always comes to mind whenever the Lewises help me out again passed through my consciousness: "Thank God for the Mormons."

Cody and I ascended the summit in his truck. It had been snowing earlier, lightly, and now was snowing a little heavier. Of all the thoughts running through my mind, prominently featuring was the voice of pessimism with all the whatifs that Shel Silverstein wrote about. But the car was still there, the flashers were still on, and everything was intact.

Cody did a bunch of things to try and get it started, explaining them all to me as he did so (for which i was grateful), but the car wouldn't start. The engine just didn't want to turn over. So we decided to, at the very least, pull the car into the next turnoff. Seems pretty simple, right? Of course it seems that way. But was it? Of course not.

In a turn of events that made me want to laugh and cry all at once, because it was so tragic it was hilarious, at least in retrospect, we did get the car into the turnoff. That entailed Cody's truck getting stuck in the turnout because it hadn't been plowed, shoveling the tires out, putting chains on them, backing it out little by little and shoveling the tires in between, enlisting the help of a passing Skagwegian in physically pushing the car as far as we could between the three of us, and finally taking off.

The next day, yesterday, was Hell. I am incredibly grateful that I live where i live, where small town is a positive thing, and where community is more than just a bunch of people sharing the space. It was a team effort that included help from Stimee (calling everyone to coordinate from the Seattle airport), Doug (attempting to get a hold of Paul), Lindsay (letting me know what went on when they heard from Paul), Blake (called by Stimee because he has access to a trailer), and, of course, Paul himself. Blake and Paul went up and got the car down for me. It was incredible of them to do it, and I cannot express how much of a weight was lifted from my shoulders when I saw the trailer and car come down the alleyway.

But the story doesn't end there. That would be too Disney. No, there's always more, because when they say "the shit hits the fan" they don't just mean one little piece from the litterbox. They mean big diapers full of diarrhea splattering everywhere.

Since Stimee is now out of town, he's letting me use his car. So I drove into town to get a case of beer and a bottle of Pendleton's as a thank you to Paul. After getting said alcohol from the liquor store, I got into Stimee's car only to find that it wouldn't start. "You have GOT to be kidding me!" I said aloud. Earlier, when I had driven by the Eagles, I'd seen the Liarsville truck there and so knew that Dirk and Doug would be there. I went to the Eagles to enlist their help, but Dirk didn't have any jumper cables. Don did, though, and he drove me down to the store to jump Stimee's car. It took a few tries, but we got it started.

"So what now?" I asked. "I leave it running for a while?"

Don just laughed. "What I would do," he said, "is do everything you need to do, leave the car running, and then park it at home. Because it might start, and it might not."

With that in mind, I stopped at the house to get my cell phone and then pressed on to Liarsville to drop the gifts off with Paul. Paul affirmed that Stimee's car does indeed have issues with the battery, and that if I needed any help to let him know. (He really is a saint. I think I'll start calling him Saint Paul.) When i went back out, the car was no longer running, but I got it started again.

Later on, I went to broadway video to get a new phone chjarger. Outside the store, of course, the car wouldn't start again. Leona bailed me out this time, explaining as she did the issues that she saw with the battery. The lights on the dash flashed the entire way home. After I parked, just for giggles, I tried to start it again. Obviously it didn't.

It'll all be OK though, I've realized. There's nothing wrong with walking a mile to and from work. In fact, on a day like today, it's preferable over driving. But the point that has become incredibly clear to me in these trials is that I am far from independent and I want nothing more than to be able to do all these things for myself, or at the very least, to be able to tell people what's wrong with my car. So I'm working on it.

If, as I said before, this was a team effort, Stimee was the coach. Couldn't actually participate, but directed the efforts of those who could. I'm going to go with a volleyball analogy because it's what I'm most familiar with. In that metaphor, I'm the helpless freshman in her first year playing who somehow is a starter but has no idea how to keep it together. Bill would be the grudging friend who I dragged with me into things, but who at least has a basic knowledge of the sport. Leona and Don would be the hitters who come in to cover things that got messed up and fix what went wrong with the powerful spikes to the opponent. And Blake and Paul, my new heroes, would be the all-around MVPs, captains of the team, the ones who can serve the ball better than anyone else, hit the ball better than anyone else, block the opponents more than anyone else, and, more than anything else, step in and make things work when no one else can.