So, at 1600 yesterday I am ready to head out to the airport. I open the garage door only to discover a car parked completely blocking my exit. Now, I’ve lived here long enough to know that the natives pretty much park whereever they please, but to actually block the entrance to a parking area for an entire apartment building is especially discourteous. So I get out of my vehicle and look around for the driver. There’s two Korean guys standing across the street watching me but they give no indication they know anything about the whereabouts of the owner of the offending vehicle.
Knowing how it’s done, I pull out my cell phone and call the number on the windshield. No answer. I left a rather nasty message in English. Now I’m very frustrated and highly pissed. I go back upstairs and call my landlord telling him he needs to get a tow truck because I had to get to the airport. He said he’d call the police, so I go back downstairs to wait. One of the two guys from across the street comes over and starts talking to me in Korean. All I recognized was “Hangul-mal” so I knew he was asking if I spoke Korean. I told him no, but he continued to speak to me while I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.
About this time my landlord’s wife walks up and starts talking to the two men. They just shake their heads. I tell her I really need to get to the airport and she talks to the two men more aggressively. Then one of them walks over, pulls out some keys, starts the car and moves it! I was astounded and livid. I asked the landlord’s wife “what’s up with this?” and she just shrugged. I was about as pissed as I’ve ever been and if I hadn’t have been so pressed for time I might have gotten into an altercation. I surely wanted to slap that rude MF’er around. Oh well. I just can’t figure out what the motivation for that whole scene was. Duke thinks they were just messin’ with me because I’m a foreigner, but that makes no sense at all.
Anyway, I pick Duke up in Itaewon (he agreed to be my navigator on my first time drive to Incheon) and we head out. Very easy drive with almost no traffic and we got there in plenty of time to meet Nolan’s plane. In fact we had time for an 8000 Won draft beer in an airport bar while we waited for him to clear immigration and customs. So Nolan makes it through and we are ready for the drive home. I had been a little nervous about driving the old hoop dee on the freeway, but she did just fine and I had no trouble cruising along at 110 km/h. Dusk was falling so I turned on the headlights. I noticed my intrument lights were awful dim but didn’t really think much about it. We got to talking with Nolan and I missed the turnoff for Seoul, but no big deal, we just took the expressway on the opposite side of the river.
Traffic was very heavy, but we were moving along ok. And then my car started to stall. Same thing it did a few weeks ago. Duke said we absolutely do not want to break down in the middle lane of a crowded highway, so I moved over to the right lane. We had about 5 kms to go before reaching the Hannam bridge and I knew there was no way the old car was going to make it. Fortunately, there was an exit to the Han river park and we got off there. I found a parking lot and pulled in. Had just enough power left to get the windows up and that was it.
Nolan grabbed his luggage and we commenced walking. We found an underpass to the other side of the expressway, and after a relatively short distance caught a cab home.
So today I need to figure out just where my car is and how to tell a tow truck driver to get there. I’m sure I have a bad alternator. I was surprised when I took it in last time and all they did was replace the battery. It ran fine until I turned on the headlights, but clearly I was not getting enough charge to keep the car going after that.
Life can be such a joy sometimes.