N.B. If you have not yet heard the beginning of the story, either scroll down a bit or click here: Questing, part 1
When last we heard from our intrepid adventurers, the White Whale had been captured, but nonetheless thwarted all efforts to tame it by dying a dreadful, explosive death in the middle of Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. Rivers of electric-green Whale Blood gushed across the fresh asphalt, and a violent pother billowed towards the sky. We managed to beach the beast in the parking lot of my apartment complex.
Now, as the proud new owner of the hulking piece of metal, I was pretty much prepared to curl up in a little ball and cry myself into oblivion. The heroes of this tale, however, M & D, somehow took the explosion as a sort of dare from the beast. A Double-Whale-Dare.
My parents, as far as I know, have never backed down from a dare in their lives. This has led to some pretty interesting scenarios, many of which involve unsafe or illegal driving practices, a lot of flesh wounds, and as far as I can reckon, my father's inability to remember the 70's with any clarity.* So, having a crotchety minivan stick out its proverbial tongue and go *ppphhhhhhbbbbbbtttt* at these people really just made them all that much more determined to defeat it.
After some scheming, we established that the essential parts included an ignition module, and a hose splice (because the explosion was caused by the disintegration of the previous hose splice), and some antifreeze.
We went to the O'Reilly's down the road.
Long, long ago, back when I was but a wee young thing visiting one of my best friends in Portland, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting this same auto parts store. It was the summer of 2005, and she and I had decided on a trip to the Sandy river for a nice swim. It was a nice swim indeed, but her car (a Ford Tempo we often called "Bitch") decided to conk out in the raging heat of the Portland sun. We got a jump from a nice Russian family who each had a flask in their back pocket and a cheap cigarette dangling from their lips, and made it back to town.¹
The problem in this case was that the wiring that connected her battery to her...whatever the wiring connects the battery to had become irreparably corroded. It oozed a mushy patina. In order to fix the issue, we had to strip back the wires and replace the connector-thingys. At the time, I knew what all of these things were called,² and walked into the auto parts store with my head held high and a clear sense of the task at hand.
I was met with a combination of sheer idiocy and unbridled condescension. The man we spoke to assumed that I could not possibly have any sense of what I was doing, probably because I was standing there all tiny and freckled in a bikini top. The trouble was, he was denser than a bad fruitcake and could not have handled the situation on his own.
So we stood at an impasse as the man who assumed I was as dumb and feminine as I looked wrestled with his own fiery incompetence. The best friend and I finally gave up attempting to reason with the man and bought the parts we needed at Wal-Mart.³
The best friend's car was successfully repaired that weekend, but that is not the moral of that particular tangent. Rather, it is an illustration of the delightful consistency of O'Reilly's. Allow me to return to the Quest:
As my parents entered the O'Reilly's in search of the three simple items listed above, they too were met with interesting employees. Employee number 1, who we shall dub Cletus (as in, "the slack-jawed yokel"), was a slow talking, slow moving, and exceptionally slow thinking man with no knowledge of automobiles and a shocking lack of proficiency with the computer database in which his only real job duties lie. He attempted several times to sell us the wrong part. Employee number 2, who seemed like a Marcy (for no reason at all), actually knew some things about cars, but was apparently so hopped up on "antibiotics" that she could not maintain a train of thought for longer than 30 seconds, and kept losing things that she had set down directly in front of her.
The entire scene was reminiscent of this display of chaos and idiocy:
At least, it would have been if either of the employees moved faster than molasses.
Eventually, it was discovered (after we bought the part), that the ignition module was in fact not needed. M & D patched up the Whale with the splice, filled all the fluids back up, and once again, it started.
And it made it home to Olympia.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the Quest for the White Whale has reached, perhaps, the end of its first stage. This means that, following some tune-ups and some test drives, the road is my oyster. And I and the White Whale are going to eat it up.
Notes:
* One such story involves a motorcycle suspended in the bushes after flying through the air.
¹ Interestingly, the location to which we returned her vehicle was less than a mile away from the beaching-point of the whale, on the same street. Though I have spent much of my adult life in Portland, that life has largely been conducted within a 2 mile radius of that first house I visited.
² I knew what they were called only because I'd called the heroes of today's story. Nevertheless, I knew. I was prepared.
³ And friends, the day one turns to the Wal-Mart for expertise, respect and assistance is the day one dies a little inside.
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