Tucson, Old Pueblo Harley Davidson, Parking Lot... I scrambled back into the car, my gaze fixed on the clutch pedal. It looked like a relic of a bygone era—lifeless, depressed all the way to the carpet, as if mourning its own existence.
You know that vacant, shell-shocked expression people get when life gleefully throws a wrench into their carefully curated plans? Like being told you have terminal cancer right after booking a two-week vacation to the Bahamas. Or stepping out of a casino, for once with pockets full of winnings, only to be immediately robbed at gunpoint. Or drifting alone in the middle of the Pacific on a hot pink dinghy, contemplating how you got there in the first place.
That was me. Completely inept at processing what was happening.
It wasn’t my first time looking like this either. A couple of years back in Nairobi, my equally untrustworthy Land Rover had crawled—on its last mechanical breath—into a friend’s driveway. There, with a dramatic sigh, it had croaked, collapsed, and refused to so much as twitch ever again.
This was déjà vu.
All attempts to stare, talk to, or threaten the clutch pedal back into compliance failed spectacularly. I took a deep breath, exhaled a string of curses, and began to ponder our predicament.
Option one: Set the car on fire. A simple, elegant solution that had the added benefit of being highly satisfying.
Option two: Travel to Italy, track down the guy who sold me this mechanical travesty, and return the favour by mutilating his kneecaps with a rusty wrench.
Option three: Find a mechanic. Preferably one old enough to remember when improvisation meant using chewed bubblegum, garden hose remnants, and a prayer to hold a car together. Ideally, this mechanic would be from Somalia or perhaps a remote region of Afghanistan, where such improvisational miracles were daily occurrences.
Meanwhile, the entire contents of the brake fluid reservoir had graciously spread itself across the pristine asphalt of the Harley-Davidson parking lot. It was only a matter of time before an EPA agent descended from the heavens, clipboard in hand, ready to slap us with a fine large enough to singlehandedly fund the agency for the next fiscal year.
And that… was the good news.
We considered our non-fictional options—a hideous choice between the devil and the deep blue sea:
- Call the cheerful Land Rover mechanics from that place we had vowed to wipe from our memory forever.
- Muster the courage to ask the Harley folks for help.
As despair tends to inspire questionable decisions, we opted to do both, figuring the combined chaos might somehow yield a miracle.
I called the Falcons first and got lucky. The friendly kid (an apprentice by the name of Josh, I believe), who had welcomed us outside the garage, picked up the phone. He immediately confirmed my suspicion that their company, as a rule, NEVER indulged in any roadside assistance or emergency help.
Yes, the fact that we were only about 4 miles away was a shame, but it wouldn't make a difference. Josh vaguely hinted that perhaps we would’ve had a better chance if we’d somehow managed to break down in their parking lot. He wasn’t entirely sure about that, though.
Anyway, I explained our dilemma to Josh, and he had a bright idea. He knew of two companies in town that specialized in rebuilding hoses of any kind—even antiques dating back to the Civil War. I wrote down their names, thanked Josh for his help, and told him to tell his boss to go drown in a stagnant hippo pool.
At least we had a viable option now, so we moved on to the Harley Davidson dealership.
There, a friendly receptionist immediately introduced us to the "Employee of the Month"—a state-of-the-art coffee machine! Brighter times lay ahead, surely.
After 15 cups of coffee and a lot of Googling—during which the HD mechanics proved themselves as useless as expected—we finally tracked down the company known for fixing things. A quick phone call confirmed they could patch up our ancient hose.
Fuelled by hope and coffee, and with a spring in our step, we returned to the vehicle, which was still parked knee-deep in a pool of DOT4 (brake fluid).
As a long-time Land Rover owner, I'm well accustomed to the quirks and breakdowns of my vehicle. The tendency to fail without warning? Oh, it’s a feature, not a bug. So naturally, I carry a long—and ever-growing—list of tools and spare parts with me. A water pump, drive chain, spare windshield, four spare tires, brake calipers, 10 gallons of engine oil, and an extra passenger door just in case. Basically, I bring everything but a whole spare car. However, it doesn’t matter how much I pack. The Range Rover always manages to break exactly the one thing I didn’t think of.
Which is why I reluctantly had to re-enter the dreaded Harley Davidson premises.
They quickly confirmed they had the tool I needed. Great! Unfortunately, they also reassured me that the aforementioned tool would, under no circumstances, be allowed to leave the building.
As I seriously contemplated setting the place on fire, my good wife saved the day.
She had spotted a Kawasaki dealer just around the corner, so we went over there.
The "Employee of the Month" at Kawasaki was a nice young fellow who didn’t hesitate for a second to lend us the tool we needed. He was smart, too—after all, where could we run off to with a car that didn’t drive anymore? And why would we? A concept the dim-witted mechanics next door clearly failed to grasp.
It took me only 10 minutes to remove the damaged hydraulic hose after successfully wading through the pool of vicious liquid acid without being dissolved.
Without further warning, we were rudely shoved into the 21st century. I was beginning to loathe this town. There were no taxis in Tucson. You had to use Uber. To do so, you need an app. Which we didn’t have. So we couldn’t.
But then, luck struck again (after the Kawasaki dealer) when a rather heavy-set couple in a Ford F150 heavy-duty truck stopped next to our Rover. They sported a license plate from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. My wife tends to leave a more agreeable first impression on strangers than I do, so she promptly approached the Wyomingites and asked for help. She explained that we were on our way to their home state, but due to an unforeseen mechanical hiccup, we’d need a little assistance. Would they be so kind as to give us a lift to the hose-fixing company a few miles away? We’d, of course, reimburse their fuel.
"No, we can’t do that," they said. "We’re on vacation, short on time. And by the way, we’re from Florida and were only visiting relatives in Wyoming."
We thanked them for their efforts—prayed for a bout of diarrhea to hit them, with only one piece of tissue to fight over for toilet paper—and my darling computer wizard proceeded to download the holy grail of apps that would provide us with transportation. Evolving with the times is a foreign concept to me, particularly when it involves the usage of smartphones. I can’t see anything remotely smart or clever about them. Perhaps it’s just me who lacks cleverness...
However, only 10 minutes later, a cheerful Uber driver, fresh from Bangladesh—with hardly any command of the English language—and no knowledge whatsoever about the cartographical layout of Tucson, arrived.
It was quickly established that while I tended to our vehicle, my wife would embark on the adventurous journey with the Bengali chauffeur. Since I wasn’t the one to share in the merry ride around town, I can only repeat what I learned afterward. I did, however, point out to the driver that my wife was very precious to me, and if he failed to return her without so much as a scratch, there would be no place—apart from maybe Saturn’s outer rings—where he could hide from my wrath.
The bright and cheerful Bengali had been—according to my wife—a staunch and devoted believer of various religions. Basically, the whole journey was a sermon about spirituality, which suited my wife—an avid believer herself—splendidly.
Two hours later, I was back, lying under the Rover in a pool of liquid acid with a beautiful new clutch hose and the prospect of dying a painful, agonising death due to prolonged exposure to this biohazard liquid. Come to think of it, I’ve probably spent more time under our Range Rover than actually driving it, so the carriage was ready to roll after 30 minutes of fiddling around.
Meanwhile, it was getting dark and late. The feckless Harley crew had long since left the premises—without ever gracing us with so much as a friendly nod—when the amiable kid from Kawasaki came along and offered help. He also offered to come by later since he lived around the block anyway. We declined, but he gave us his phone number just in case we ran into more trouble.
Which we didn’t. We headed to the next truck stop and settled in for the night.
We did learn a valuable lesson today:
Don’t give your car any ideas and pee in a pair next to it.
There were more lessons to come on this trip, but...
That’s another story.
Marcel Romdane
