(mis)adventures

I had a good trip. I'm going to tell you all about it. But, first, a little math.

Proportion of visits to Costa Rica when Ryan has not either filed a police report or sustained major vehicle damage: 0 / 3

I think the best way to describe the trip is to tell it as a series of short stories. Bonus points if you can put them in the right order.

*

The airplane shuddered as it touched ground in Montreal. I held my cell phone in one hand, and a bottle of Pepto Bismol in the other. The second the landing gear hit tarmac, I lit up the phone and started dialing. We'd been on the road since for 17 hours, and had twenty-three minutes to reach the car rental desk before we were stranded for the night. Make that twenty-two minutes.

Andrea and I had laid out our system long in advance. She was to wait for the bags, and I was to get the car. Twenty minutes. Jesus, how can 411 put me on hold? Once we were able to get off the plane, we were to move as fast as we could to outrace our fellow passengers, and beat the rush to customs. What? You don't have the number for Avis? I have an idea. Check the A's. It was a well-laid plan, but it did not allow for the death-grip that Costa Rican cuisine held on my stomach. Swallowing a moan, I took another slug of the sweet, chalky pink fluid. Oh, so their telephone system's down. Bloody perfect. The lights dinged on, and we shot to our feet. Eighteen minutes.

*

"We're making good time," I mused, noting a sign that placed us less than a hundred clicks from San Jose.

Glancing down at the driver's-side mirror, I wondered what Avis would say when we brought the car in. Glue flaked off the finish, and it was clear that something wasn't right in anything resembling direct sunlight. I may have had the photos that proved it wasn't our fault, but whether that was enought to prevent us from being presented with a thousand-dollar repair bill was yet to be seen.

My frown deepened as our little Kia Rio's zippy jaunt was ended by the sudden appearance of a large cargo truck on the winding two-lane that carved through the Costa Rican rainforest. Annoyance turned to outright fear as a gentle corner abruptly turned into a steep climb. I slipped from third to second, just in time for the car to jerk to a halt on the middle of the hill. Behind us, a tourist bus stopped inches from our rear bumper. Behind them, another car waited.

"I don't think they hit us," Andrea said, looking back.

What she didn't say, or need to say, was that we had a stalled car on a hill so steep that we could barely see the horizon, less than two inches from causing a second round of major body damage. No number of photos would get us out of paying for this one, or release us from the wrath of one seriously pissed-off tour bus driver, provided we so much as looked at the stick-shift in an untoward manner.

"Hang on."

I blessed the Patron Saint of the Canadian Forces Armoured Corps, and all the many hours I had spent jump-starting ancient Bombardier jeeps. I thought of all the thick-skulled Corporals that had screamed at me for stalling their precious military hardware, and silently thanked them for their none-too-gentle ministrations. I yanked back on the emergency brake, slammed the gear into first, stood on the gas, and slammed the e-brake back to earth like a mighty plastic-coated hammer.

I'm not sure what the fine Korean engineers at Kia were thinking when they built that little Rio. I wonder if they thought it might be a good first car for some young fellow, just starting out in the world. Perhaps they pictured it on the highways and biways of North America, slowly gaining renown as an economical and practical alternative to pricey Detroit steel.

But, I would be willing to bet that they did not picture that cute, zippy little car laying down a patch of rubber in the middle of a Central American rainforest, screaming a primal scream and filling the air with the smell of burning tires, as its two sweaty Caucasian passengers prayed a silent prayer to move up that hill, just one little inch.

Well, I'll hand it to those Korean engineers. We moved an inch. We moved lots of inches. Almost a hundred kilometers worth of inches. And after that? Well, let's just say that if you ever rent a Kia Rio in San Jose, you might want to make sure that the e-brake hasn't been vaporized before you sign for it.

*

That's it for now. More to follow...