If you believe in Karma, then it stands to reason I wasn’t very good in a former life and paybacks came while I was at business meeting in Cincinnati last year.  The meetings themselves were splendid; the adventure only began on my journey home.

My co-worker, Jennifer, and I were heading out to my car.  For reasons that I won’t explain, she was going to drive.  We got in. We buckled up for safety. She turned the key.  Now at this point, usually something happens.  I tend to expect the car to start.  But even a clicking sound or a mild flashing of light is warranted.  In this case?  Nothing.

I raise the hood and do my best impression of someone who knows exactly what he is doing under the hood. 

“Something is definitely wrong.”  I confidently declare, trying to make the obvious seem revelatory.

“I think the battery is dead”, my co-worker replies. 

This is what I like to call “brainstorming”.  We are really working as a team now.  I expertly state the problem; she is throwing out possible solutions.  We are firing on all cylinders now.  (Figuratively of course.)

I am just in the parking garage of our building in Cincinnati, so I call our marketing counterparts in our office to ask for a jump.  No one has jumper cables, but I am informed that the parking garage does have a recharging device on site.  This is good news.  Hook it up, turn it on, and we are rolling home to the ‘Ville.

We retrieve the charger from a kind lady named Jill and prepare to connect it to my car.  I cannot emphasize it enough that charging batteries by connecting the positive connection to the positive post and the negative connection to the negative post.  Otherwise you will enjoy a violent display of sparks that will do your battery absolutely no good.  Not that this happened to me, I just thought you should know.

Now that we had the charge hooked up correctly, we started the car.  The glorious sound of a roaring six-cylinder engine in need of a tune up was finally heard.  Life was good.  We disconnected the charger and the car immediately died.  We peaked early.

I am nothing if not persistent.  I find it makes up for my lack of mechanical inclination.  So we hooked it up again and let it charge.  After 20 minutes of small talk, a glorious thunderstorm began.  I had no choice but to stand in the rain and take it.  It drenched me from head to foot, but we were ready to again leave.  Feeling mildly inspired and mostly damp, we rolled out of the parking garage. 

We paid our ticket, and on cue Karma bit me firmly on the butt.  The car died the moment the gate lifted.  The little black and white striped plank of wood that separated us from the free world stood upright mocking me.

We pushed the car into a space just outside the gate and regrouped.

I needed to change my asset position.  It was 4 in the afternoon in Downtown Cincinnati.  I can fix this myself, but I find myself lacking definitive diagnosis on a late model Infiniti, tools, and I am wearing a suit.  I needed a change of clothes and an idea of what I was up against.  While driving all the way home wasn’t ideal, it seemed my next best option.   It was decided to hitch a ride with Rick, my colleague, who thankfully, stayed late for other meetings.

The ride home was uneventful.  Jennifer, Rick and I all seemed to enjoy ourselves.  We talked music and family and religion and work and my automotive plight.  Even though this wasn’t going to be an easy evening, it was made easier by good friends.
 
I called my wife during the commute home to apprise her of the situation.  She sprang into action.  She called her Dad for an over the phone consult on the car situation (he voted alternator), a call to my mother for babysitting services, a three calls to auto part stores to buy an alternator, figuring even if we were wrong on the alternator, we could always return it.

Upon my arrival home, everything was ready to go.  I quickly changed clothes.  I was now mostly dry and feeling a renewed sense of hope.  Fifteen minutes later we are on the road back to the Queen City. 

My wife’s family is from Cincinnati.  Her father Tom, called his brother Chuck, who lived about 10 miles from where my car stood abandoned.  Chuck gladly agreed to help.  This is good.  I have tools, dry clothes and an expert all planning on a 7:30 rendezvous in the PNC parking garage.  This is easy.  I am going to be in and out in no time.

However my plan didn’t include becoming embroiled in traffic from the Bengals preseason game against the Green Bay Packers.  What are the odds?  Nor did it include me having to pay an event parking fee for both myself and Chuck to just get into the garage.  So I am an hour behind on the plan, and twenty bucks lighter in the wallet.  No big deal.  I just start quoting motivational clichés. The going gets tough, the though get going.  Improvise, overcome and adapt.  You can’t have a comeback without a setback.  Play like a champion today.  A stitch in time saves nine.

We can’t work on it where it is.  Upon arrival it is determined that we need to move the car back into the garage to work on it.  So it becomes my job to convince the staff that they should let me work on the car.  Fortunately for me Jill is still in the office and appreciates my circumstance.  She agrees, with conditions, that I can work on the car, but if I am unable to fix it then I need to get it towed.  Perfect.  We are in business.

It is decided to try to charge the battery and then work backwards to determine a cause for my why my car is dormant.  Chuck reaches into the back of his truck and pulls out homemade jumper cables.  I question why he carries around homemade jumper cable.  My first mistake of many on the evening. 

It is then explained to me that a terrible scam has been perpetrated on the American people by selling them jumper cables that could only be used when cars where side by side or facing one another.  These cables however could jump another car while behind the distressed vehicle.  To be fair, my uncle could have left his truck at home and still had enough cable to reach my car.  I’ve got MacGyver as my mechanic.  Things are looking up.

After 45 minutes of careful examination, Chuck determines it has to be the alternator.  Not bad news considering I have a replacement part.  We need more tools.  We decide to tow the car to Chuck’s house and fix the problem there.  Only problem is that all the tow trucks drivers are watching the Bengals game and we can’t get a pick-up until halftime.  We get the car onto the street and sit on the curb and wait.  An hour later a driver, a Cleveland Browns fan, arrives to take my car to Uncle Chuck’s driveway, the Promised Land.

It is now about 11 o’clock and Chuck’s wife Bobbie is at the door.  Chuck gives her a summary of the plan, and she is starts setting-up.  Apparently fixing cars late a night is a common occurrence at their house because they were quite prepared.  Bobbie got the light stand with industrial quartz lights from the dining room and brought it down to the drive way.  We need to review that last statement.  My wife’s aunt and uncle keep a light stand with industrial lighting attached, in their dining room.  Sure it seems odd, but who am I to question my mechanic.  We are going to be on the road in no time.
 
A quick perusal of Uncle Chuck garage makes you realize that he owns all tools.  The man must go to Home Depot and scoff at the limited selection.  The hydraulic jack, jack stands, air compressor, battery charger, tool belt all come out of the garage, we are ready to fix this car.  The threat of rain leads us to even set-up a tent over the car.  This is a sophisticated set-up.  Nothing could go wrong now.

Chuck climbs under the car and I learned two things about him while under there.  He hates my car and the metric system.  (As a side note, if you are the design engineer for the 1993 Infiniti J30, my wife’s uncle would like to meet you and kick you in the balls.)   It took some hard work and strong language, but we were able to finally remove the broken component from the car.

That is when the thunderstorm hit. 

Strong winds, severe lightning, heavy rains.  It got so bad a one point I considered taking up animals two by two and building an ark.  With all the tools and spare lumber in Chuck’s back yard, this was more possible than you would think. 

We had been quick to put up the tent and hadn’t really constructed it in such as way as to allow the water to run off.  In fact the roof was sagging due to pooling water.  My wife and I move in to reinforce the tent.  We head to a corner that looks like it is about to go.  I stand just inside the tent, she stands just outside.  In one motion, I pull the corner of the tent down, while pushing the roof of the tent up.  In that instant, about 10 gallons of rainwater dumps on my wife.  She screams, completely drenched.  Most people would see this as a setback.  But truth be told, seeing my wife standing well-lit by industrial quartz lights in a wet t-shirt was the highlight of the entire trip.

Even with the tent fixed and rain subsiding, trouble was brewing below the car.  It was impossible for one person to hold the alternator in place while attaching it to a plate underneath. 

I head under to assist.  We do marginally well, but we need to place a bolt inside the part to attach the alternator to the car.  This takes three people.  I hold the light, my wife places the bolt, Chuck holds the alternator.  In twenty minutes, we are attached.  My wife and I remove ourselves from under the car, while Chuck remains to finish the job and begin another rant on the metric system.

Finally around 1 AM we are finished with the car and it is attached to the battery charger.  We get to rest for about 20 minutes and clean up.  After a scrub down we hug and shake hands and we are ready to leave.  Only thing is my headlights work, but nothing else does.  My windows don’t roll down, my brake lights don’t work.  Chuck tells me to rev the engine and get my RPMs up.  Lo and behold it looks like Christmas inside my car. We speed off for home.

We made it about 3 miles before we broke down. 

We place a 2 AM phone call back to Chuck and suggest that this might be a battery problem.  He agrees and comes to pick up my wife and I to take us to the local Wal-Mart.  I choose to stay in the car while my wife goes inside with Uncle Chuck to purchase the battery. 

Feeling slightly helpless, I decide to find something that I can control.  I grab my Blackberry and start sending e-mails on various topics from the handheld device.  After a dozen e-mails my mechanic and my wife return with battery in tow.  My wife proudly observes that even though she was wet and greasy, she fit right in with the rest of the Wal-Mart shoppers at 2 A.M.

We return to the car to discover that the members of the neighborhood where we left have found my car situation quite interesting.  I am pretty sure we have broken down next to a crack house. At this late hour, I haven’t decided if that is a good or bad thing.
 
A group of onlookers have magically appeared on a stoop at a nearby apartment, while nervous residents begin openly gawking from their front widows while we demonstrate how to change a battery in the dark. 

With the new battery installed, we fired up the engine and made haste out of Cincinnati.  We made it about 32 miles before breaking down on I-71.

It is now nearly 4 A.M.  We are 80 miles from home and with no clue what is wrong with the car.  We pray.  We call a family conference.  We decide that the next best option is to call my father.  He works nights.  He has just gotten off his job and should be wide-awake.  We send for him and a set of jumper cables.  Here is our new plan.  We are going to jump the car home to Louisville.  By charging up the battery, we think we can do fifteen to twenty miles per charge.  Car dies, pull off the road, charge it up and drive again.  Not an elegant solution, but one that will get my car near my mechanic and out of the perilous situation we currently find ourselves in.

Nothing left to do but wait.  My wife takes the front seat of the Caravan, I am in the back and we try to rest.  Even exhausted, sleep does not come easy when semi-trucks are plowing past at 80 miles per hour.  Somehow we both manage to doze off, until my father comes by knocking on our window with a flashlight. 

We apprise him of the plan.  We get out the jumper cables and in what only can be considered the most dangerous and professional piece of driving of the evening, my wife orchestrates our Dodge Caravan turning 180 degrees with oncoming expressway traffic in the dark.  With the cars nose to nose we pop the hoods and let the van charge the car battery for 20 minutes.  That seems like enough to us.

Our three car caravan is now barreling down the highway at a speed that is well above the posted suggested speed.  (Those signs are just suggestions, right?)  We only have so much juice, so we determine it is better to go quickly down the road than really worry about the details of what is written on road signs.

We make it a mile.

Car is dead, again.  It is determined that the headlights are draining our battery too quickly and we will never make it in the dark.  Instead we decide to charge up the battery again, but let it charge until day break.  We are about 45 minutes until sunrise.  But before attempting another doughnut to align the cars, someone has the brainstorm, to take the battery out of the car and carry it the car that will be doing the charging.  This minor breakthrough would prove to save us time and trouble for the rest of the journey. 

It is now around 6:30 in the morning.  We have enough daylight to go.  The battery has been charging for nearly an hour and we make our first attempt to Louisville that is not in the dark.

We have mild success, if you consider driving 21 miles before breaking down mildly successful. Our caravan stops, we remove the battery from my car, and start charging again.  Only 80 miles to go.  Drive. Stop. Charge.  Just like Wash. Rinse. Repeat.  Except without the lather.

We are making it about 10 to 15 miles per hop by now and we are beginning to get a bit punchy.  At each stop, my wife starts jumping every guardrail in search of fossilized rocks.  There is nothing like picking up highway fossils for the kids.  Why did we have to have the car breakdown before we started treasure hunting on the side of road?  We promise each other to come back when the car is running properly.
 
We are about 20 miles out.  We are getting close to I-265.  The traffic is really starting to pick-up.  It is getting a bit risky to merge into traffic.  To save juice, I have to wait until I see an opening on the highway, start the car and mash the gas.  I am lamenting my driving plight to the assembled pit crew.   They don’t give me tips.  Instead, my wife wanders off over the guardrail in hopes of finding a shiny object and my father starts walking across the highway.  Why he is heading into oncoming traffic is beyond me.  The car is already an impediment to getting home, having to take home his dead body is really going to slow us down. 

He makes it into the median and thoughtfully watches traffic.  A few minutes later he wobbles back across the highway with news.  He informs me, “You have about six cars coming every 10 seconds.”

First, this information is useless.  We have all been up too long.  Secondly, could he not have done his “Eye on the Highway” traffic count from the emergency lane?   I just say, “thanks” and shout for my wife to end her I-71 archeological dig (FYI: I think we found a dinosaur bone near exit 19) and our three car caravan get moving again.

We are flying down the highway.  We make one last stop.  We are about 12 miles from home.  We decide that we are going for it all this time.  We are going at attempt to make it all the way to my driveway.  We have to stay close because if the car dies on surface roads I am going not going to have emergency lights, brake lights or an emergency lane. 

Now we drive.

We go from I-71 to I-264, then right on to my exit.  I am not using the brake.  I start weaving.  My wife is close behind.  Man, can she drive.  She could be in NASCAR, if NASCAR would allow mini-vans to race.

We run all yellow lights, and arguably some red ones.  I can’t honk the horn.  The horn is attached to the battery.  It is just me, the accelerator and God getting us home.  I burst on to our street, which unfortunately is a popular thoroughfare and fairly busy at 11 in the morning. 

I am hitting the home stretch passing cars on the winding two-lane stretch to my house. I am two houses away from my driveway.  The car dies.  Power steering goes out, and I swerve into the first driveway I see.  I jump the sidewalk, go across the neighbor’s lawn and turn hard in to my yard.  Car is dead, I’m not.  We are home.

Whenever I tell the story everyone wants to know what was wrong with the car.  But that is not important.  I took my life into my hands, my wife joins me and starts her own one-woman wet t-shirt contest, we break down in front of a crack house, and my father is so sleep deprived that he is literally playing in traffic.  What is important is all the people that helped me in my crisis.

Jennifer, Rick, the Cincinnati marketing department, my father-in-law, Jill the garage lady, Uncle Chuck, Aunt Bobbie, my father, my mother and most of all my wife.  Without all of them, I don’t get home in one piece.  That is the moral of the story.   My road trip is allegorical of our commute through life.  We need other people to make it all the way home.

And for the record it was a bad fuse.  Two bucks at AutoZone.  Fixed in fifteen seconds.