One of the things that I love to do is drive. Ever since I learned in 2016, I have always been eager to get behind the wheel. It is usually an exhilarating feeling for me, and so I jump at every opportunity that I get. So when my uncle asked me to drive his SUV to a beach for an outing, I was at the wheels before he could say "drive."
My uncle hosts an outing with his workers every year. And this was yet another one. We were going to need more than one vehicle, however. So we got a few, and that's how he assigned me to one since I could drive, and I am indeed an excellent driver.
I wasn't the only one in the vehicle that could drive. But I was going to do most of the job and only switch whenever I needed to rest.
One thing about driving a vehicle that's different from what you're used to is that it'll never feel the same, and you'll spend some time figuring things out for a while. As much as it felt different, there was nothing much to it, and I was on the road soon enough.
For most of the journey, I navigated through the bad roads and traffic jams somehow at that time. But there was a point that I needed to do more than just turn the steering.
You see, we lost our way. Or rather, we didn't realise that a certain part of the road was blocked, and so we had to follow a detour that would put us back on track.
The next turn was really far, and there was no way we could go in reverse to the previous turn and then make the detour. And so we thought to cross the pavement between both roads for incoming and outgoing vehicles. I wasn't driving at this point. It was one of those few times I was resting.
We were close to the beach, and so we were already seeing beach sand. Crossing the pavement was unsuccessful, unfortunately, and the vehicle wouldn't move forward. It was stuck.
The driver and I got down to find out what went wrong, and we discovered that one of the tyres was in a ditch. Reversing was slightly possible, but we were stuck regardless. Then I took over to pull some Fast & Furious stunts.
I reversed a bit to the point where the tyre could get out of the ditch, and then I held the brakes right at that high limit. I changed gear to the highest one, and then, with sufficient speed, I drove out of the bridge. I knew that the weight of the tractor would go a long way in bringing it out of that ditch. And we got to the beach eventually.
Getting back wasn't smooth either. We left late in the evening. And on our way, we had a flat tyre. This was about 9 p.m., and we were nowhere near home.
To our surprise, the vulcanizer nearby had just recently closed for the day, and when we asked for his help, he declined. And so we were left to sort ourselves out.
We were parked at a filing station and right close to the main road, so we felt a little safe. And right there and then, we had to circumvent the situation and eventually pump the flat tyre. That took a while, but we were on our way soon enough.
An hour later, in our way again, the radiator developed yet another fault, and so we had to stop again. I couldn't believe this. Thankfully, there was a remedy available in the vehicle, and so we fixed it quickly too.
Close to midnight, we were finally near home. I had switched places with the other driver a long time ago to rest. And yet again, we had a flat tyre. Since we were home, we just managed the tyre the way it was and drove home slowly and gently. Despite it all, we were all home safe and sound. And that is one of my peculiar road trip experiences.