Weekend Getaway ~ Part Three: The Long Ride Home

As I hung out in thin shadows, trying to shield myself from the blazing afternoon sun, Jim approached Jesse - the boy who we would be spending the next three hours with. Sad thing is, I didn't learn his name was Jesse until we collected the receipt at the very end of our long afternoon ride together. 

But I'll get to the details of our ride in just a moment... 

First of all, we had to choose between two options:

• Get dropped off in Merrit (about 45 minutes away), get a hotel, and hope that someone could fix our car in the morning.
  
• OR, get towed back to the dealership in Kelowna (roughly 2.5+ hours), and see if the issue is covered by our warrantee.

All things considered, it was pretty much a no-brainer - get back to Kelowna where there's a chance we won't have to pay for repairs. And fortunately, Jesse was more than happy to drive us that far.

Although our first impression was that he seemed like a bit of a character, I think it's just because we don't hang with a lot of 19 year old dudes who chew n' spit tabaccy.  Jesse quickly opened up to be a pretty cool young guy. It was an interesting slice of life talking to him for a while. 

First of all, like a lot of 19 year old boys, he loves to drive fast. He has received five speeding tickets in the last few months. Of course, he always goes to court to dispute them, in hopes that the officer won't show up.  

He also took the time to tell us about the accidents he's been in. Fortunately he has more speeding tickets than accidents under his belt. Whew! Lucky for us. ;) 

Jesse's boss, Ken, is always on his ass and getting into his personal business - like the fact that he has so many speeding tickets. ;) Jesse thinks Ken might be bipolar because sometimes he's nice and invites him over for dinner, and other times he's screaming his head off. As a result, it seems there's a pretty high turn over rate at MMT. In fact, when Jesse called for the assistance of another tow truck driver, he learned that his friend had just quit that morning, citing he had had enough of Ken's b.s. 

With Mercury in retrograde, we saw about a dozen other vehicles on the road that day. Nothing serious... just breakdowns. Apparently hot days make it much worse because people are cranking their A/C which contributes to overheating. Jesse said that's why he'll often drive up to that hot dog stand where we met him. Most cars tend to break down around that point just after that long, steep hill. (Actually, as we pulled away, we saw a van had broken down in the same place where we had just been. Although with 7 people to transport, I imagine that they would've had some greater challenges than us!)

With morbid fascination, we encouraged Jesse to describe the other various breakdowns and accidents he's witnessed along the road. Some of them were quite interesting, like the girl who went over the median into oncoming traffic. Her car was completely ripped in half (!), yet she was released from the hospital the next day. They believe she was texting when it happened. Nice.

Then there was the time they had to tow a huge semi from California that had gone off the road because it didn't have winter tires. The fee for the tow ended up being $27,000 (!), which the company managed to pay. However, some truck drivers aren't so wealthy and end up leaving their trucks behind for good if they can't afford the fee. Like the watermelon truck driver who owed $6,000. All the watermelons in the back of the truck went bad when he didn't return to pick it up. 

Anyhow, getting back to Jesse, he has only been working for the tow truck company for two months. His other job is a bag boy at a grocery store in town, where everyone loves him. (Which is a good thing too, because his little afternoon detour to Kelowna was gonna make him late for his 6:00 shift. He wasn't too concerned.)  He took on this towing job to earn extra money to pay for school. He should find out if he's been accepted soon. He'd like to be an electrician. 

Jesse already took a trades program where he was the top student in three out of four classes. He felt he did best in plumming and electrical, put didn't feel up to snuff in millwrighting. If he pursues being an electrician, he can apprentice with his dad, with whom he has an awesome relationship with. 

Because Jesse works 7 days a week and his dad works four days on/four days off, they don't get to see much of each other. Whenever they get the chance, he and his dad have a project car that they work on together. I think he said it was like a Cobra or Viper or some kind of snake... Of course, I might be mistaken? It sounded like an exciting car anyway. 

But Jesse isn't all about cars, he really got into religion when he was younger, even though his parents have never had any interest. When he was only 15 he went on a mission to Guatemala and helped build a school. He also started sponsoring a 5 year old child when he was down there. Even though Jesse isn't really into the church thing much anymore, he still keeps in touch with his sponsor child. 

Jesse still lives at home on the farm, where they have a few horses and around 150 chickens. They collect the eggs every day and his family can make about $750/month selling them. When a chicken is a year or two old, they'll sell it for meat. 

But even though life at home is good, Jesse is excited to get the heck out of Merrit, meet new people and just live life. He said that a few times - he just wants to meet people. We figured he probably meant girls, and our suspicions were confirmed when he admitted that he's never had a girlfriend. 

There's only one high school in town, so you already have a good idea what's out there. Based on this knowledge, Jesse n' his pals joke that 70% of the girls in Merrit have an STD. So they like to go partying in Kamloops instead. (Which is where he also plans to go to school.) He'll occasionally party in Kelowna too -- although two weeks ago someone dropped something in his drink at The Level nightclub, and he found himself hallucinating a while later. Apparently it would've been a good trip if he wasn't trying to get back home to Merrit at the time. 

For some reason, Jesse seemed to be under the impression that we were around his age. (We didn't bother to correct him. Ha!) A couple times he referred to us inclusively saying, "y'know, people our age..." He also asked us if we like the clubs in Kelowna. Ha ha. I told him that we're more pub people. :P

Then after almost 3 hours of playing "Getting to Know You", Jesse dropped us off at the Hyundai dealership and we waved goodbye. That is also when we coughed up $660 for the tow, and how I learned Jesse's name when I saw it scribbled across the top of the receipt. 

Then we paid another $30 to take a cab home. Our cab driver was a snowy bearded East Indian gentleman. He was working late, covering for his brother-in-law who couldn't come in. Apparently he had been beaten up in his cab the night before and his face was all cut up, so he wanted the night off.  fuckers!  (They don't deserve capitalization or my usual self-imposed censorship.)

Anyhow, aside from his recent spell of bad news, our cab driver was very upbeat and friendly. He shared a couple other stories with us, including his own experience breaking down along the Coq, when his rental truck began shaking uncontrollably, resulting in him being slammed into the side barrier. 

As for the story of our lil' car, it turns out that we totally made the right decision! The problem is definitely covered beneath our warrantee, although the parts will take a few days to arrive. If we had been towed only to Merrit, we'd have to pay for a hotel and repairs.

Aaaand, because we had such poor cell reception where we broke down and couldn't call the Hyundai roadside assistance people, we just have to send them a letter and our towing bill and they'll look at covering it. 

What luck!