Friday, the 13th - Part 2 - "The journey to Amherst"

.............Yes, the evening before Tejaswini's graduation my car broke down. Teju switched off the car and I asked all to get out (which was easy considering the traffic). After realizing that it was just steam and not smoke emanating from the hood, we put the car in neutral and took it to the side of the street. A cop came in soon and asked about us. We told her that we had insurance and would call them.

I called up my insurer and it took them over 30 minutes to find someone who could tow us. She told me that since no repair shop was currently open, they would tow us the next morning and that she would find us a taxi to get us out of there now. Leaving the car there was not an option for me and I requested her to tow the car to whichever hotel we were taxied to. Finally another 15 mins later, she found a tow company who could tow us to a repair shop who would repair it the next day. She then put me on hold to find a taxi company. Half an hour later she asked me to call the cops and ask them to help find a taxi.

Not knowing anything else I could do, I called 911. 15 mins later, a cop car arrived. The cop got out of the car and told us to get back to the car. After this ordeal, we did not like being treated as criminals. The previous cops had been nice but this cop was rude. He told us that no cab would pick us up on the highway, we could not walk off, he could not guide us off the expressway since the next few exits were closed and that we had to get out in the tow truck. The tow truck arrived and could seat a max of two. I turned back to the cop and asked him how we could get off now and he yelled at me "Dont panic, we will figure out a way to get you out of there”. I think he mistook the panicker! Thankfully, Teju had found a taxi service that would pick us up by then. We thanked the cop (who had not let us get our stuff out of the car either for safety reasons and waited for the cab with the tow truck.

The cab driver called us a few mins later and we told him exactly where we were and that there was a tow truck with flashing lights behind us........and he missed us! He turned around at the next exit and reached us a few minutes later and we found out that after telling the cab company at least 4 times that there were 5 of us, they had sent a sedan. Thankfully, the cab driver, seeing out plight was kind enough to allow us all to squeeze in. We took the cab straight to Amherst. Thankfully, our friends in Amherst (Andrea and Kratae in special cameos) had delivered the robe and hood to our hotel which was a 5 min walk from the spot of the ceremony. Andrea had even started to drive down to pick us up before we got the cab. We were glad that we did not have to rush around to pick up stuff and fell into bed past 1AM on Friday, the 13th. Little did we know that the day had just begun………watch out for the thrilling finale to this 3 part blog coming to the internet this weekend.