I hate to disappoint, but this post is not at all related to the “Dude, Where’s My Car” movie (2000) with Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott. (On the other hand, that might be a good thing!)  My version of “Dude, Where’s My Car” is 100% non-fiction; a chapter in the autobiography I’ll probably never write. Actually, the story has yet to reach a conclusion, but here’s where we are so far.

My wife Tammy and I recently took a two week road trip, (pictures and travel posts coming) which ended in Ottawa, Canada, where I attended the American Federation of Musician’s conference (I’m president of Local 294).  As we were driving into the city, a few miles from downtown, we noticed lots of people beeping their horns. We looked around and didn’t see anything unusual.

But when I looked again out the passenger window, the driver of a neighboring car was pointing urgently to the back of ours. All of the beeping was for us!

We pulled off to the side of the highway. I got out to take a look at the back of our vehicle, and saw this:

It doesn’t look like much from the picture, but in real life, it was pretty shocking. The back right tire was at a pretty serious angle. It definitely looked like it could fall off at any moment.

We got off the highway, figuring it would be safer to drive through the lower-speed, city neighborhood roads. Our goal was to get to the convention hotel and figure things out from there.

This happened on Friday mid-afternoon. So while I was doing convention stuff, Tammy did some research and made calls, but it was too late in the day to get to a garage before they closed. Things would have to wait until Monday.

When Monday arrived, Tam took the car to a mechanic who informed us that, if it was their car, they would not fix it at all. Apparently, the thing that holds the wheel on was rusted, and to replace it would mean putting the new part on top of other rusted infrastructure. They thought it best to just get rid of the car, but they did understand that we lived 443 miles away from Ottawa, in Lititz, PA.

We looked at every option we could think of; fixing the car with a new part, fixing the car with a used part (which would most likely also be partly rusted), selling the car in Canada and buying a new one there, having the car towed just across the border into the US and doing a buy/sell there….

The international options all seemed to require about three days in order to get the paperwork sorted out. The garage also needed three days to obtain the used part they needed to make a potential repair (which would be a temporary fix anyway due to the rust factor). After considering everything, we decided to get the car fixed, drive it back home, and then look into selling or trading it.

The next problem was that the garage needed three days to obtain a used part, meaning it wouldn’t be fixed until Thursday or Friday. We were supposed to leave after the convention on Tuesday.

Fortunately, we were able to hitch a ride back to Lancaster with our local union treasurer, who was also attending the conference. 

This week we are at the beach with my wife’s family, so even though the car should be fixed in the next few days, the earliest date we’re available to get it back is July 6, a little more than two weeks after the Canadian drivers made us aware of our situation.

So on July 6, one day after my birthday, my wife and I will drive seven hours up to Ottawa, pick up the car, and then drive seven hours back. 

So – dude, where’s my car?

It’s at a garage in Ottawa; full of dirty clothes, and souvenirs- 443 miles away.

Life sure is interesting! 🙃

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