getting here

I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do this. I made it! MAN what an ordeal getting here!

I bought a 1994 Toyota Tercel for 850 bucks. Colour: Maroon. Original asking price: 1150. Rebuilt engine (major selling feature) and a rusty body (embarrassment enducing feature). After some car savvy gents approved of the rust bucket I spent some more change getting it ready for the road. I loaded it up to the brim with all my dishes, trinkets, milk crates, used clothes, sleeping bags and other ghetto accoutrements that I had been acquiring in Halifax. I began the seven hour drive to Edmundston, New Brunswick with anticipation. I completed the obligatory cry as I crossed MacDonald bridge and watched the city fade in my rear-view mirror.

I believe the engine started knocking about forty minutes later. I didn't notice right away because the radio was way up. I turned down the radio and my heart sank. The little 4 valver was knocking like a mini hammer rattling around an empty coffee tin! It was rattling like it had an old metallic bee in its bonnet! It was shaking in a way that I just knew was bad bad news. Indeed, less than half an hour later the car came to a wickedly dramatic halt on highway 102. I was out like a shot and down the bank thinking the smoke pouring out of the hood meant it was on fire.

So there I was, ten minutes outside Truro crying into my cell phone as I watched the oil chug and vomit out from beneath the car. Later, the mechanic at the Toyota dealership in Truro informed me that an engine rod had suddenly and violently ejected itself from the machine via the oil pan. Hence the hole in the pan that looked exactly like a bullet had been shot out from the inside.

After spending several mind-numbing hours at the dealership a kind soul arrived in his batmobile-esque Civic to rescue me and all my stuff. I doubled back to HRM where another kind soul offered me the temporary use of a cranky-clutched but otherwise ship-shape Mazda for my second attempt at moving. A third kind soul escorted me around as we readied the Mazda for its trip. Throughout the entire ordeal a long-distance kind soul loved me, talked me down, supported and coached me along. So many kind souls are in my world. As horrendous, sweaty, expensive and stressful getting to St. Basile was, it also helped me remember all the wonderful people I know. Thank you!

Epilogue: Engine officially blown, the Toyota now rests at an impound lot in Truro. I screwed up my courage and called the guy who sold me the lemon. I told him my tale and in not so many words blamed him. "Rebuilt the engine" HA. The culprit offered to help me find another engine. That's fine, so long as he pays for it. If all goes according to plan the aforementioned kind souls will insert the engine into the body, and maybe you haven't heard the last of the old maroon-mobile.