Some excitement the first day: I left the hospital after
work and came out to a dead car battery. No apparent reason: no lights left on;
no door left open. It is nice that the AAA card works anywhere. The bonus
stressor was that my blackberry was also getting low on charge and I was a
little worried that if the tow truck couldn’t find me, I’d be enjoying "Moonlight in Vermont"** without mobile phone capability. Then there was the issue that, because I
was so close to my hotel, I didn’t think to use the bathroom in the office.
Now, whether it was the weather (wet and drizzly) or just knowing I couldn’t
get home, I suddenly REALLY wanted to be back in that dazzling Parisien
bathroom. Rather than wet my pants on
the hospital grounds, the back up to the back up plan in my brain was to
abandon the car in the VA parking lot and walk across the street in the rain to
my Fairfield Inn. But in just 40 minutes Bob’s Tow Truck came and jump-started
my car. Once it started, I was afraid to
turn it off lest the battery spontaneously drain itself again, so I drove
around the neighborhood to charge up the battery. In this way I gave myself a tour of downtown
White River Junction. I found the organic Co-op, the Tip Top café and the
Amtrak station with an old time-y train parked for decoration. I made it back
to the hotel and crossed my fingers that the car would start in the morning.
It started! So I was
off to work for a second day of learning names and getting lost in the maze of
the hospital attached to all the other buildings. Every day on a “detail” job
feels like an interview. I was slightly self-conscious asking to leave 15 minutes
early to find Northeast Foreign Cars as someone had recommended they could
check the battery on my Saab. I find
relying on the Tom-Tom-GPS destroys my innate sense of direction. When the
voice says “turn right in 600 yards” and I turn right in 300 yards by mistake,
I end up going north instead of south. It took a little time, but I found Northeast
Foreign Cars. You can imagine how happy they were to see me arrive at 4:45pm
without an appointment. I explained it was my first week in town and I was
uncertain and worried about why my battery had died. Paul, the manager, came
out and looked under the hood. He remarked that I was from Maine. He was from
Maine! We chatted about where in Maine and why we weren’t in Maine. He couldn’t
see any obvious reason why the battery might have died, so he asked me to bring
the car back at 7:30 in the morning and he would have someone drive me to work
while they checked it out. I thought it sounded like a plan, but when I went
out I found the battery dead again. The new plan was that they could just keep
the car overnight and I offered to walk the 1.5 miles “home.” Before I could
say, ‘Bob”s Towing is your uncle,’ one of the guys stepped forward. I thought
Paul had asked him to drive me back to the Inn, but he had asked him to hurry
up and change the battery. Within 20 minutes, I had a new battery, a new Maine
friend and peace of mind that I would get myself to the new job on time the
next day. And the Saab and I lived happily ever after until the end of the
first week.
**Moonlight in Vermont: Frank Sinatra and Linda Ronstadt
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