My car is in the jungle. I feel a little guilty about that. Not because of the impact on the environment — after living in two third-world countries for one year and three months, I know that one more dead car in the jungle barely scratches the surface of global disaster. My car could have avoided its fate if I had paid attention to myself. But as is often the case, I listened to someone else’s logic and left it in Mexico with a luke-warm feeling that I would return to it in the fall.
My car was the second car that I ever bought on my own. I bought it because it was small and silver, it fit five people, and I liked it. It was good to the car; I changed the oil when I was supposed to, replaced the door when I drove out of the garage and ripped it off, got it inspected, fixed whatever needed fixing, and used it like a locker room. It was my closet for skis, skates, gym clothes, students’ papers, a package of CDs, a tire gauge, its registration, dog hair, when I had a dog, and a lot of dirt from trails that I hiked. I cleaned it once a year, the day after school ended.
I left my car in the care of a friend when I left for in Tampico, Mexico, with the understanding that he would drive it a few times a week and make sure that it did not rot. When that did not happen, he found someone who was willing to pay to have the layers of mold growing in it cleaned in exchange for being able to use the car. I returned having never seen the mold in the car and drove it back to Tampico, Mexico. Other than the rust that had been chewing its way through the wheel wells and a loud banging sound, the car drove me to Mexico like a dream. It gobbled up gas as low as 1.97 a gallon and slid through Mexican immigration for a mere 350 dollar deposit.
The car took new friends and me to beautiful places in Mexico. It helped me fall in love with a country in trouble, some of the greatest people I have ever met, and a beauty that overwhelmed me. Sometimes the car carried up to five people, and, other than their having to get out for the topes (giant speed bumps), she was a trooper.
Toward the end of the school year, I journeyed to San Padre, a small island on the edge of Texas that meets Mexico and the gulf. I desperately needed a taste of America. I also wanted to collect my 350 dollar deposit from immigration and re-register my car for the following year. I hopped in my car right after work and began my journey. Since I was following a GPS, I was lost within the first hour of the trip. But I figured that as long as I kept the ocean to my right and headed north that I would hit Texas at some point. And I did, pushing the car to 90 miles per hour just to see how fast she could go.
On the way back to Tampico, I did not get lost. I kept an average speed of 80 until suddenly all of the lights in the car came on, and although it started up again, steering was a problem, so I slowed down – no way was I going to stop in the Northern Corridor of Mexico, you can read any newspaper if you want to know why. I found a gas station after driving for five minutes with no power steering. I had to yank the steering wheel to turn, and suddenly the steering worked! So just to be sure, I poured in some steering fluid, even though it wasn’t low, and drove the remaining three hours back to Tampico.
It was then that I decided that my car needed a thorough check-up. Not only had the car stopped running at 80 miles per hour, the banging was louder than ever. I took her to the dealer in Tampico and was told not to drive the car under any circumstance if I valued my life. Everything was wrong with it. Hearing news like that is like hearing from a doctor that you’re sick. You try to find someone who says that you are fine or at least curable. So I found a mechanic friend-of-a-friend and asked him to fix everything that was wrong for ¼ of the price that the dealer had told me it would cost. I fixed the rust for a song, and the car was looking good. The banging sound was the piece that was trying to hold the engine in place. The only thing that I had left to fix was a headlight (about 200 dollars a pop) and something for the back wheels. I decided to wait.
The school year came to an end, and when I left my car in the school’s parking lot for safe-keeping, I had a strong feeling that I would not be returning. I had a pending job interview for a company in Malaysia, and I was tired of working in the classroom. I pushed my premonition aside, left the car under a tree and headed home.
That night before I left Tampico, I called my car-sitter friend and told him that I should just get in my car and drive home. His voice of logic convinced me that I should not. After all, I did not have another job, and it is never a good thing to not have a job, no matter if there is a glimmer of one in the future. So I boarded the plane the next morning and flew to New York City.
The day after I landed in the US, I had an on-line interview with an e-learning company in Malaysia. If I had a tape of the interview, it would be an excellent lesson on how not to interview. First of all, I knew little about the company, and I knew a lot less about the job than I thought I did. I had prepared an assigned lesson to present, and the interviewer asked me to skip the first fifteen minutes of it. He also asked me why I picked the topic for the lesson. UMMMM…you told me to? When my presentation ended, he pummeled me with questions, none of which I could answer. Feeling my hackles rising, I started to respond with a sarcastic and saucy edge — I have no idea what you are talking about… No, I do not have any questions about the company…no, I do not know ANYTHING. The interview ended before it should have. I hung up and was glad that I had listened to logic and left my car in Mexico. Two days later, I was offered the job. I had never considered working in Malaysia, but I figured why not.
So there was the problem of the car sitting under a tree in the parking lot in Tampico. Mexico. I considered leaving it there, but a more than generous friend, who was still in Tampico, offered to tow it out of Mexico and into the states for me. Who could turn down an offer like that? The day after that, I got a text.
Um… Lisa… Yes…There is a problem. Your car…Yes…is in the jungle…Yes…?
Apparently, someone had not checked the hitch too carefully after my car was loaded; one hour into his journey home, my friend watched my car fly off the trailer and crash into the jungle. The only thing someone can do in that situation is leave — especially if you are in one of the most dangerous sections of Mexico towing a car that does not belong to you out of the country, and driving an unregistered vehicle to boot.
So that’s it. My car has either been stripped to nothing, towed, then stripped, or it still sits in the jungle. If I had not listened to someone’s logic, or if I had followed my own logic, I am not sure what would have happened. Logic is a matter of perspective.
I am in Malaysia where I don’t need a car anyway.
Use Fortified Bicycle if you like riding a bike.
