We were worried that we, er I, had done irreparable damage to the Beetle but once that diesel was out of it and running on “petrol,” as we Aussies say, we were “good to go,” as you Americans say. Kaz said that we would one day think of this incident, this ‘Diesel Incident’, and laugh while retelling it, well I guess my writing it down is testimony to that. At the time however I just felt dumb. We drove on out to the 95 freeway and had no sooner settled into it than our friend calls us. Have you left yet? Where are you? How bad was the car? Did they fix it? Did you pay for it? Is it running again? Where are you now? When will you arrive in MD? My wife patiently listened to the cell phone and then replied calmly, “Yes, I-95, not, yes, yes, yes, I-95 still, 4 hours,” and her friend was satisfied, so she said she would spend the day shopping and meet us at a designated mall in MD.
That morning we had walked about a half mile to a restaurant and bought breakfast before the car was ready and my wife has this thing for Dunkin’ Donuts and I gathered that as soon as we hit the 95 we would probably be stopping again to partake of a Dunkin’ coffee and some donuts. True to form, we had not been driving an hour when we spot a Dunkin Donuts sign and true to form, almost as if the car drove itself we exited and parked in front of a donut shop. Now, I am kind of old fashioned when it comes to Dough Nuts and if you buy them in Australia they are cooked fresh right in front of you and the girl sprinkles cinnamon only on them, then you eat them, mmm delicious. In America, well maybe only North Carolina they have this Krispy Kreme company that makes Donuts that would be quite alright, except that they cover them with this glaced sugar cream monstrosity that adds about 5,000,000 calories to them. This is not to mention the donuts that have chocolate sugary cream coverings on them. Dunkin donuts make their own donuts but they are much the same with coverings.
I go into this store and the girl says, “Good morning, what would you like?” so I say I just want a small coffee and a dough nut. Well she starts with, “Yes sir, but what kind of donut would you like?” I look at her and shake my head.
“I don’t know,” I said, “A dough nut, ah, one with a hole in it, oh yeah, and one without all the creamy crap on it, just a plain simple dough nut.”
“Oh,” She said, “We don’t have any of those,” and she tries to suppress a laugh. My wife came to the rescue, “Yes you do,” she points out, “he wants one of the ‘old fashioned’ donuts there.” So the girl smiles and yells out to the guys cooking in the back, “Hey, we need more old fashioned type donuts, someone actually bought that one that’s been there for a couple of days.” I looked at my wife and she smiled her ‘Welcome to America’ smile and we took our coffee and food outside. After we had consumed coffee enough to revive and hype us up for the drive, we set out on the 95 road again but not before taking snapshots of each other with the beetle for posterity.
I am not without experience at driving through Virginia and there is a bridge over the James River which is so high that when I drove over it in 2005, I had tingles of vertigo. I almost expected to turn the windshield wipers on as I expected to drive through the clouds. I had never been so high and not been in an aircraft. So I nonchalantly suggested to my unsuspecting wife that we do like tourists and take the I-295 bypass around Richmond when we get there. I made my case with mention of the beautiful scenery of Southern Virginia and the James River etcetera etcetera. So the question came back, “Why, is Richmond a bit of a headache to drive through on Fridays?”
“Why, no not at all, there’s just a bridge I want to drive over, it is the highest bridge I ever drove over and you’ll love it,” I calmly replied.
