Day29.El Paso

Krys is here!


El Paso.
After taking Jessica to the airport, I had some time to kill before getting Krys so I started towards the oil-changing place. On the way, I thought I’d stop and make a few phone calls. Of course, I sat there with the lights on and so when I was ready to go, the car wouldn’t start- again. A homeless man stopped and tried to help me push start the car but even together we could hardly budge the car. While we were resting, he noticed that I had a flat tire. We chatted a bit more, he rang the bell and left.

This was only the beginning of my good fortune for the day. Up on the hill was some kind of car dealership, and when I went in there, they had a portable battery-charging unit. It was so small I didn’t know what it was, but the man assured me it would do the job and off we went. He declined to ring the bell so I rang it for him and then he went back to work.

When I finally got to the oil changing place they were really busy and said they could change the oil in an hour or so but that aside from filling the tire with air they didn’t have time to deal it. I figured I’d go someplace else for the tire and left them with the keys and took off to find someplace with a wi-fi connection while I waited. I was gone for more than an hour before I returned to see the car, bell and trailer sitting right where I had left it and I was really disappointed that they hadn’t gotten around to it. Then I looked a bit more closely and saw that it had been moved a tiny ways forward. My good fortune multiplied. These guys had not only changed the oil, they greased the wheels for the trailer, filled all of the tires with air, found the nail in my tire that I had been riding around with and plugged it up. And they only charged $25.00. If you are ever in El Paso and need something done to you car, go to the Super 5 Auto Center on 1140 Airway Blvd. These guys are terrific! AND they rang the bell.


To the airport- no Krys. So I waited until the guard came over and informed me that I couldn’t sit where I was and had to keep circling. But she rang the bell to send me off and I rode around the little airport a few times ringing the bell upon request each time I passed the terminal. When Krys finally appeared, the first thing she did was ring the bell and then we took off.


But not so quickly. After circling around and around so many times, you’d think I would have noticed how to exit the airport, but I didn’t. In fact, we ended up in a very long line of what turned out to be parked taxis. Since I couldn’t back up the trailer, we settled in and figured we would have to wait for hours until we got to the head of the line. Unfortunately after 20 minutes or so, one of the taxi drivers who had been playing cards came over and said we would get a ticket if we didn’t move. We said we would like to move but couldn’t back up and so someone came over who used to drive an 18-wheeler. He backed that little trailer up in almost no time (with advice from the rest of the card players who had come to watch). After ringing the bell, he gave us directions to Juarez and we set off.