"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
This is especially rings true to anyone who has had any significant travel experience. . . . .
So the day before I am supposed to leave for the holidays (and incidentally, my final day of work in Houston), the 'check engine' light comes on in my ancient '99 Ford Escort (affectionately named, Mr. Toad or referred to as The Rally 'scort). I immediately suspect the loose positive connection on my car battery, since the day before I had been installing a new car stereo and didn't have the right tool to put it back on correctly. It was somewhat haphazardly placed back on and my intention was to get a much needed oil change and have the local grease monkeys tighten it for me.
I casually mentioned the offending warning light to the PTCS resident car-expert/co-worker Andres, just to see if that potentially could be the cause. Lucky for me that I did mention this important piece of information as Andres (who of course has the perfect tool) was able to do a computer scan diagnosis of my vehicle.
The results weren't pretty: 1 completely dead O2 sensor and an erratically behaving/soon to fail 2nd O2 sensor. Two dead O2 sensors = immediate roadside failure, which is something I was definitely hoping to avoid at all costs. This was in addition to the squeaky steering belt that I was hoping would be fine till some later TBD maintenance plan. The future start date of my road trip now looked to be in question as I tried to chew this piece of information and think about where/how I could get all this work done over the holidays (especially since the garage I had been going to turned out to have been doing shady, sloppy work, so I was not eager to patronize their business).
There was much distress in my mind until Andres becomes the hero of the trip even before it began! He offered to fix my car the day I fly back from Detroit after he gets back into town himself from McAllen, TX. This is not a small sacrifice as McAllen is 6+ hours away and he would still have to go to the store and pick up parts, etc at 6-7pm and then still work on the car for a few hours. A very long day indeed.
At that moment, I had a 'maybe I will miss texas' pang as I felt very lucky and fortunate that I had such a good friend who would be willing to help me out and make sure my car was going to make it on its long journey.
On the day of, true to his word, Andres had my car all patched up and ready to ride by 10pm. No large complications arose and he pointed out to me a few other items he noticed while working on Mr. Toad that would need attention sometime in the near future, but would not jeopardize the current trip. I was super grateful for all his help and I wondered where I would find another car guy once in Seattle who was as great as Andres?
Then Andres reminded me he was on IM at work and was still cool with dispensing advice (even though I was no longer his team member).
Since it was so late, and I had been exhausted by all my moving/school finals/holiday travel plans that I decided it was best to sleep one more night in Houston before I rode off into the sun set.
Day 1 Hero of the Day: Andres.
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