"The Beetle is Back" V - Day Two - The Voyage Home

I get back in the van and I realize that everyone in the van is a bit restless...

I call my travel agent and a few minutes later she has me booked at Hertz, downtown in the lobby of a hotel. I ask the driver if he knows where it is and he does. I just multiplied the amount of money that I was spending to get home and I wasn't going to "relax" until I was in a car.

We arrived downtown at the hotel and circled around looking for a Hertz sign and didn't see one. I just asked the driver to stop at the main hotel entrance and I thought I would just check inside. I felt like I was pushing my luck keeping the driver out this long, but I didn't have much choice.

Sure enough, just inside was a Hertz desk and a lady was sitting there. Still not ready to accept that this was going to be easy I slowly approached the desk. She asked..."are you Bryan?". My heart skipped a beat - our travel agent had called personally and set things up. I was all set. When I confirmed with her that I had a car, I stepped outside and told the boys to unload the van.

10 minutes later we were loaded up in the car, the van was gone and the first thing we did before pulling out on to the street was to pray...

15 minutes later we stopped to have lunch and we all took a deep breath - we were still 3 hours from home, but we were on our way. Oddly enough, we stopped at the same place we stopped on the way up to eat (Hardees). It seems that if you want to eat north of Beckley and south of Parkersburg you only have a few choices. The car has XM Satellite, so Shawn and I listened to "The System" (a techno station) the whole way home and talked the whole way.

We were home by 4PM, the beetle was still in WV, but at least WE were home. The beetle, unfortunately, still had a long road home...

"The Beetle is Back" II - Hurry Up and Wait

It's now 1:30pm on the 25th and the three of us are sitting on the side of I-77, literally 50 yards from the toll booth. The good news is that I have a cell signal - if this had happened 5 miles in either direction that might not have been the case.

After opening the hood and scratching my head I looked in my glove box and found the number for the VW roadside assistance and called them. The nice woman on the phone informed me that my roadside assistance coverage had expired just a few months ago. However, she could get me to the closest VW dealership.

OK, we're getting somewhere now. So, let's get me to Beckley...right? No - the closest place that can work on the car is Charleston WV - we just passed Charleston - it's 45 minutes BEHIND us. She tells me that it will cost me $191 to get it towed to the VW dealership in South Charleston WV. I ask - isn't there something closer to NC? She starts listing off other places that are farther away - IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. Of course, it also costs more to get them there. I finally just tell her to send the truck and get us to South Charleston -they take Visa or MC...

How long will it be? About an hour and a half...

So, me and the boys sit tight on the side of the road and wait.

About 30 minutes later I get an automated message telling me that the truck will be there in about an hour. 30 minutes after that someone calls me and tells me he's on his way - just confirming where I am - pretty hard to miss us.

So, somewhere just short of 3pm the tow truck shows up. HE CAME FROM BECKLEY WV. When I figured this out I asked him if there wasn't some place he could take this in Beckley and he tells me that there isn't any place in Beckley that can work on a VW. Wow - the 8th largest city in WV, so named "The City of Champions", over 77,000 in population doesn't have any VWs. Go figure...

So, it's about 3pm and we are in a tow truck based in Beckley, traveling AWAY from home about 45 minutes north to South Charleston which, by the way, is WEST of Charleston. I asked the driver if we passed the airport on the way and he said that the airport was south of Charleson and that we wouldn't pass it to get to SOUTH CHARLESTON because it's on the other side of town. The driver is "pretty sure" he knows where this place is and asks me if I do. Wow, I'm impressed.

I already know that we going to end up somewhere that no one will be to greet us because it's Sunday and no one is home at the dealership on Sunday (or Saturday for that matter, but more on that later). I also know that even though this is 2nd the biggest "metropolitan area" we pass during our trips to and from Michigan (the biggest being Toledo) we can't usually even find a place to eat here except Hardees (they are everywhere).

We get to the dealership area about 4pm...