Toward the end of my sophomore year at William and Mary, my best friend K.T. suggested that we take a trip over the summer. Her grandparents, it turned out, owned a cottage in the mountains in upstate New York, and they'd love to have us up. (The cottage became somewhat family property all summer, and at any given time there were between four and ten people staying there.) Anyhow, we thought it would be fun.

I had bought my first car that year - a 1976 Plymouth Volare, which I got for $650. About three weeks after I bought it, I'd had to replace the water pump, and the thing was plagued with electrical problems. We called it the Cow-Car (for various reasons), and while it got me around town just fine, but it was obvious that this was not a vehicle to take on a ten-hour drive.

No problem. K.T. had a car back home - a mammoth Buick which had been her mother's. She assured me that it was more than capable of making the trip, and that she would have her mother take the car in for a tune-up before we arrived, just to be sure.

So we piled into the Cow-Car and headed for K.T.'s parents' house, which was in the middle of nowhere, about half an hour or so from Charlottesville. (The Cow-Car was perfectly happy making a two-hour drive.)

K.T.'s mom assured us that she had taken the Buick to the garage and that it was tuned up, gassed up, and ready to go. We had a map that K.T.'s mom had made for us, marking our route. So we went. We would take turns driving, stop for the night with a cousin in Pennsylvania, and finish the trip the next day.

About an hour into the trip, deep into Appalachian nowhere, a little red light lit on K.T.'s dashboard. The engine was overheated. We found a little country store and pulled over. We looked under the hood... Hey, wasn't there supposed to be some water in the radiator reservoir? Another fifteen minutes later, the radiator cap had cooled enough for us to open it, and sure enough, the radiator was completely dry. (So much for the " thorough checkup " the car had been given.) The people at the country store lent us a garden hose and sold us a bottle of coolant, and within another half hour we were on our way again.

We spent that night with a cousin of K.T.'s whose name escapes me. The cousin had a husband, a small baby, and an ex-nanny living with her. She asked if we'd be willing to take the ex-nanny, Peg, with us. Peg was on her way back home to Vermont, and had family who would be happy to pick her up in New York, but weren't crazy about the idea of driving all the way down to Pennsylvania. Well, the cousin had fed us and put us up for the night, and we were going there anyway, so it was the least we could do, provided Peg was willing to take a turn at the wheel, and she was. We went to sleep quite happily.

The next morning, we set out bright and early. I sat in the back seat and Peg took the first turn at the wheel. Now, before I continue, there are two things of which you should be aware: 1) The Buick had a slight but definite pull toward the left, which was easily correctable by simply turning the steering wheel ever so slightly toward the right. 2) I had in my youth been susceptible to motion-sickness, but I thought I had gotten over it.

Peg absolutely refused to correct for the car's pull. She would let it drift and then yank it back to the center of the lane. After about forty-five minutes of this, I was forced to demand that the car be brought to a halt so I could throw up. We had luckily stopped near a drugstore, so we went and bought some Dramamine. Peg was exiled to the back seat.

We had made it to New York and were driving merrily along some interstate when suddenly the passenger side of the windshield and the passenger's window were covered with a thin greenish liquid. I (who was riding shotgun at the time) looked out the window and saw a plastic cup rolling along the street, rapidly receding in the distance. I came to the conclusion that the driver of the truck we had been passing had thrown his Mountain Dew out his window and hit us. We made snide remarks about rude people, K.T. ran the windshield wipers, and we drove on.

About an hour later, we discovered that it had not been Mountain Dew at all, but radiator fluid, when the same red indicator light came on. We pulled over at another country store (why didn't any of these things happen to us when we were near actual towns?) and opened the hood. Sure enough, the radiator cap had not been put back on tightly enough, and had blown off when the pressure had gotten too high. Luckily, it had actually landed in the engine and was lying there waiting for us.

Unfortunately, this country store didn't have a hose for us to borrow. They washed out a gallon jug of the type that condiments are shipped in, and we carried it back and forth between the spigot and the car. (Peg, by the way, was no help at all. Her reaction to the crisis was to buy about half a dozen candy bars from the store, and sit in the back of the car whining about it. We had grown to hate her by this time.) Do you know how much water a radiator holds? We don't. The mayo jug didn't exactly allow for precise pouring, so a lot of water ended up on the ground. But it was a lot. We must have made fifteen trips back and forth between the car and the spigot, which was, of course not in the front of the store where the car was.

We checked and re-checked the radiator cap, and headed on to New York. We made it to K.T.'s grandparents' house, got rid of Peg, and went with the grandparents up to the cabin in the mountains, where we had, actually, a very fun week.

The day before we were to begin the drive home, K.T.'s grandfather, having heard our stories of radiator troubles, thought it would be for the best if we bought some radiator sealant and used it on the Buick. For anyone reading this who's never used radiator sealant, it's a fine greyish powder that you pour into the radiator. When the liquid in the radiator gets hot, the powder melts, and wherever it encounters a cool area (theoretically, wherever there's a leak) the stuff re-solidifies, and it plugs the leak. We bowed to his wisdom, which turned out to be a stupendous mistake.

See, the Buick's radiator didn't actually have a leak. Our problems had been the result of carelessness. But we set out. We were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where the exits are all spaced at least fifty miles apart, when the red indicator light came on again. We pulled over and popped the hood. This time, we could actually see the water in the reserve tank boiling. It looked dark green and nasty. There was neither an exit nor an emergency phone within sight. We waited for half an hour or forty-five minutes for the engine to cool, and started up again. It took less than five minutes for the light to come back on.

We proceeded in this fashion for the better part of two and a half hours before we finally encountered an exit. It led to yet another tiny town in the middle of nowhere - Bear Creek, PA. We asked the attendant at the toll booth where the nearest service station was, and went straight there. This was in the middle of the afternoon.

The garage mechanic gave the car an hour and a half to cool, then started poking around. The result? The radiator sealant, lacking any actual leaks to seal, had sealed the water pump valve. The fix? A new water pump, to the tune of around $150. (I knew that amount already; I'd had to replace the Cow-Car's water pump shortly after I'd bought it.) Luckily, I had some traveler's checks that I'd brought with me for the trip. The catch? A water pump fitting the Buick was not in stock. A new one could be had the next morning, however, and the car would be ready by about noon.

By this time, it was late afternoon. There were no hotels or motels nearby, and K.T. did not feel happy with the idea of sleeping in her car overnight. So she called her cousin, who agreed to send her husband to Bear Creek to pick us up as soon as he got home from work. We sat in the car with several paperback novels, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, around midnight, the cousin's husband arrived. It turned out that we were further from the cousin's house than we'd thought - a good three-hour drive, plus he'd come home late and gotten lost on the way. We made it back to the house around four, and quietly agreed that perhaps we would have been better off sleeping in the car.

We got two hours of sleep, and then got up. The plan was: We would go with the cousin's husband to his office, and he would loan us his car to drive back to Bear Creek to pick up the Buick, and then we would bring his car back to his office. He worked about another hour further away from Bear Creek from his house, but it was the only solution we could come up with.

So, we drive him to work. I drive his car, because it's a manual transmission, which K.T. doesn't know how to drive, and this is not the time to teach her. We drive four hours back to Bear Creek, arriving around noon, but of course the car is not ready yet. The car is finally ready for us at about two, and we take both cars and drive back to the cousin's husband's office, arriving around six. Luckily, he works late a lot.

Finally, finally back on the road! We were due back at K.T.'s parents' house by now. But we had called and told them of the troubles, and they knew we wouldn't be getting home until around ten. And now, we know everything is working!

Don't we?

Two hours down the road, just short of Gettysburg, less than twenty miles from the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, we cross an exceptionally noisy bridge. I don't think anything of it. Only the noise continues after we're off the bridge. I look at K.T. K.T. looks at me. The same thought occurs to both of us at the same time. We have a flat tire.

We pull over - guess where - into the parking lot of a little middle-of-nowhere country store! Only this one was closed for the night! We look at the tire. Flat. I am so tired, my reaction is a slightly hysterical glee: I know how to fix a flat tire. My father wouldn't let me have my driver's license until he'd taught me how to change a tire and change the oil. I'm almost ecstatic with joy. A problem I can fix!

But...

I turn to K.T. " You do have a spare tire, don't you? "

" Um... I don't know. "

With great trepidation, we open the trunk. And there, underneath our luggage and a protective cloth, is a spare tire. I take it out and bounce it. It even has air in it. My elation returns.

And then I return to the trunk for the jack.

The Buick, you have to understand, was originally a luxury vehicle, before it aged a decade or so. It had once had the very finest of everything. That included a state-of-the-art emergency jack, with some minimal hydraulic pressure to help with the pumping.

Only we couldn't figure out how to unfold it. The instructions were mere pictures which made no sense. I tore off two fingernails to the quick simply fiddling with it. About this time, I told K.T. to go stand on the side of the road, wave her straw hat at passers-by, and look cute and helpless.

I had no idea how dumb of an idea this was.

I, you must understand, was born and raised in Virginia. The area in which I grew up is heavily peppered with military bases, and so I don't think of it as a particularly Southern area. But it is.

For those of you reading this who have little or no experience with the South, please let me explain. Two women on the side of the road with a flat tire, one of them small and cute and waving a hat, would have been almost instantly surrounded by large, mechanically-competant men in pickup trucks. We would have had to endure a few patronizing comments and nicknames like darlin', hon', and little lady, but the flat would have been fixed, we would have said said a few profusely grateful comments. attempted to pay the gentlemen something for their time and effort, been refused, and been on our way inside of an hour. But we had failed to fully comprehend the consequences of crossing the Mason-Dixon line, and this did not happen.

More than half an hour later, two cars finally pulled over to help. One held an elderly couple who would only have been useful in continuing on to a phone and calling someone to help us. The other car was manned by a high-school aged boy, whose name, I remember, was George. George confessed that his only motivation for stopping was the sight of two women. Chivalry is not dead, we suppose... We waved the elderly couple along once George assured us that he knew how to fix a flat tire.

George spent about ten minutes with the state-of-the-art jack, and pronounced it beyond his understanding. He opened up the trunk of his car and brought out the sort of wrachet-jack that I knew how to operate. We had it assembled and the car jacked up in no time.

Now, with the sky rapidly darkening in a combination of nightfall and what I later found out to be the remnants of a large hurricane, we proceeded to change the tire. This was harder than it sounds, because the rim of the hubcap had been folded around the edge of the wheel when we drove on the flat across the bridge. It took all three of us with two crowbars and the sacrifice of two more fingernails and some blood to remove the hubcap.

Thankfully, once the hubcap was off, the only further complication to changing the tire was the rain (from the hurricane remnants). With many profuse thanks to George (now titled St. George) we continued on our way.

By this time, we were nearly hysterical. We were afraid to go faster than fifty miles per hour, because we had no idea what kind of shape the other three tires were in, but the spare tire was a basic donut, meant to go maybe thirty miles. And we had over two hundred yet to go.

From Gettysburg to the Maryland border, we chanted, If we can just get to the Maryland border, we'll call someone to come and get us. From the Maryland/Pennsylvania border to the Maryland/Virginia border, we chanted, If we can just get to Virginia, we can call someone to come and get us. From the Virginia border to Charlottesville, we chanted, Almost there... Less than five miles from K.T.'s parents' house, we had to cross a stretch of very badly repaired road, and I nearly had a heart attack.

Finally, just after midnight, we made it to K.T.'s parents' house. They knew we were going to be late because of the water pump, but there hadn't been a working phone nearby when the tire blew. K.T.'s mom was very worried, and my parents and boyfriend had both called to ask what was taking us so long. I barely had enough energy to call them back before collapsing into sleep.