When I Shut Down the GW Bridge. Because Free is Too Expensive.

Not to sound paranoid, but I think Ryan is trying to kill me. Again. Because he suggested I look into getting another Toyota van. Which is exactly how he tried to kill me five years ago. I think he finally realized that every time he sends me out in the death trap Buick with the faulty ignition switch and bald tires, I don’t end up totally killed. Just really pissed.

Before we owned the “doors don’t open, sheet metal screws holding the bumper” van, we owned a “doors do open if you kick ’em hard enough, seat belts don’t click so everyone has to triple buckle” van. 

So Ryan drove this triple buckle van to Ocean City, where our friend who happens to be a very reliable mechanic told Ryan to fix the cracked radiator before he left to drive 500 miles back home. And our friend offered to fix it. For free. 

Ryan’s like fix for free? Nah, that sounds too expensive. I’ll just drive it back as-is.

And somehow the fucking thing made it. Which of course to Ryan meant the problem totally went away. Therefore, he found no reason to mention any of this to me a week later when I took the triple buckle van back to Ocean City. 600 miles. Through NYC. ALONE. 

When I got to the Bronx it started to rain. Waterfall rain. Traffic was stopped and smallish drug dealer type cars were weaving around 18 wheelers and Chinese buses and it felt a lot like needing the jaws of life was going to be a thing. 

Finally all 900 cars and I crammed onto the George Washington Bridge, and everyone was zig-zagging through flood rains to merge with 15 lanes of angry NYC bound traffic. Like picture 600 clawy cats on methamphetamine trying to form a single line. That is precisely what merging onto the GW Bridge in the Bronx in a downpour during rush hour is like. 

Suddenly my van filled with smoke (kind of like my kitchen when I make steaks, but without the charred steak aroma). More like motor oil on a bonfire aroma. And it was getting so thick I could feel my face melting off and my eyeballs stinging.

Frantically I pulled over to a shoulder that wasn’t a shoulder but a traffic lane smashed against what should be a guard rail. It was not a guard rail. By any modern standards. I was basically dangling 6,000 feet over the dead-body-infested Hudson River with a makeshift fence of wire hangers as a barrier. And me pulling over caused six lanes to merge down to five lanes. This made people want to shoot guns. At me.

Cars were sideswiping my smoking van while honking and pissed off drivers flipped me the middle finger and thee only street signs I could see in the cloud of smoke and smog and rain said BRONX and HARLEM. I was like holy mother of everything I am going to fucking die. 

Not one single person drove by me without blaring the horn and calling me some variation of stupid bitch, asshole, dumb ass, or fucking idiot. 

I called my friend the mechanic and I’m like Hi Josh I am going to die from drug dealers pushing me into the Hudson River because the van broke down in the Bronx on the GW. And he’s like Why the hell are you in the Bronx? And I said Driving to Ocean City. And he’s all Jesus Christ Julie please tell me not in the Toyota. And I was like Why not in the Toyota????????????????

And then he told me: Radiator. Crack. Free fix. No thanks. Let’s kill Julie.

So Josh is like calm the hell down and find a water bottle and pour it in the radiator. And I’m like WHAT THE FUCK IS A RADIATOR????? 

Have you ever stood in front of a smoking broken down van that causes an entire lane to shut down on the George Washington Bridge in rush hour during a downpour while on a cell phone trying to figure out which one of the 43 metal thingies in your engine could be a radiator? Then skillfully, while being honked at and called a stupid bitch, dumping a giant bottle of water into a hole the size of a needle? No? Of course not! Because YOUR SPOUSE ISN’T TRYING TO KILL YOU!

Finally the radiator smoke looked more like a gentle bonfire than a gas station fire, and the van limped to a convenience store. IN HARLEM. My nerves felt like fireworks, and I figured the only thing worse than breaking down in the Bronx and shutting down the GW Bridge is getting a DUI in Harlem, so I put back the armful of 40 ounce Twisted Teas and bought two cases of water. And decided it was a good time to take up smoking. 

For the next 300 miles I had to pull over on the Jersey Turnpike in the rain every 20 miles to dump water into the leaky, smoky, could-have-been-fixed-for-free-last-week-but that’s-too-expensive radiator. 

Then 10 hours, 43 bottles of water, and 3 packs of Marlboros later, I made it to our house in Maryland. With a case of smoker’s cough and COPD and Nervous Something Disorder and pretty much guzzled a liter of wine to get to sleep. Alone.

And when I told Ryan all of this he’s all, “Huh. The van ran fine when I drove it. What’d you do?” 

And I was like, “We probably shouldn’t see each other for awhile.”

Then my friend found some sketchy dude who ships shitty minivans to South Africa, and the shady dude pays you $2,000 for your death van, which in my estimation was like $5,000 more than it was worth. And now there are probably diamond smuggling human traffickers triple buckled in the back of my van somewhere in Namibia. But the good news for them is that the radiator got fixed first. Because I’m responsible like that.

So I guess you could say the point of the story is: Apparently I care more about diamond smuggling human traffickers in Namibia than Ryan cares about me. That and when your mechanic tells you to fix something, please fucking fix it people.