Last Friday (15 February 2008) was quite the day for me…and by that, I mean it was the single most ridiculous day of my entire life. In order to convey the feeling of helplessness and geo-spatial influences which made it so, I have included the below Google Map to provide a walkthrough of my day: Begin at the Easternmost point of the Blue Line and you will be takes chronologically through a day in the Life of Andrew Cafourek.

Blue Line: My car and I

Red Line: My Car, The Tow Truck and I

Green Line: Reem and I

View Larger Map

But for those of you who don’t want the full interactive experience, I’ve added all the walkthrough text here:

7:25 a.m.

At 7:25, my day began as I rolled out of bed to face my Friday. I knew it was going to be rather inconvenient, but only because I had plans to drive to Columbia to meet up with Farouk for our weekend trip down to Oklahoma (for a presentation). Other than that, I thought it was going to shape into a rather decent day: it was a tad warmer than the last few days, the sun was out, and it was payday!

So with these thoughts, I got up to begin what I thought would be a rather slow Friday…

8:13 a.m.

At 8:13 a.m. I went and got in my car which was parked out front…I had my traveling mug of coffee and the day was looking good. There was a wee bit of frost, but my $15 ice scraper with built-in grip and brush took of that in short order.

As a note, my car is not actually a taxi…but this is the only car icon Google Maps has.

8:13-8:45 a.m.

My trip to work. (Blue Line)

8:45 a.m.

Right around 8:45 or so I got to work…all full of coffee and ready for the day!

8:50 a.m.

So after parking my car, I head into work to begin a normal day.

I don’t have internet at home yet (I just moved in) so I spent some time catching up on twitter, RSS feeds and the like.

Well, before too long I got an email telling me that I could pick up my paycheck! In New York City. Now, since you are reading this, you are looking at a map which denotes my current location. Please take a moment to observe the area and notice that my little icon is very far away from New York. (I have placed a $ icon to show you the location of my paycheck in relation to me)

Apparently, the computer thinks I work in the NYC office so my check is across the country…but no worries, our HR folks said they could overnight it to me! This of course made me very happy since I’m still living on a college income while I am starting to pay grown-up expenses. And since I was going to be in Columbia for the weekend, I figured I might as well get it mailed there…so with that, all is well in the world.

The rest of the day at work was rather uneventful aside from my dismal failure at Rock Band, but that is neither here-nor-there. So I was here until around 3:05 p.m.

3:05 p.m. : From Work to Ruin

I left work at 3:00 to go to Columbia…this is the route I took: 270 N to I-70 East…apparently there were accidents because it took me almost an hour to go 35 miles, so it was pretty miserable. (2nd Blue Line)

4:00 p.m.

Well, there I was, minding my own business, listening to David Gillespie on my stereo, when I saw a cop coming down the on-ramp with his lights on.

I thought, ah, how do I get over when he is coming from the right-hand side?

4:00 p.m.: The 5-0, the Police, the Fuzz, Johnny Law, the Boys in Blue

This is where the cop was the first time I saw him…coming down the on ramp with his lights on.

4:01 p.m.

So as I throw on my blinker to get in the right lane, the cop is immediately behind me to the right side, so I was a bit concerned…trying to figure out how to get out of the way.

Then, suddenly, I felt my car loose power! My RPMs dropped to 0 and I couldn’t accelerate. My first thought was that I had somehow hit my gear-shift into neutral, but that wasn’t the case. So I was slowing down rather swiftly at this point because I couldn’t go anywhere, the cop was blocking me to my right and I was going to get rear-ended if I coasted in the left lane!

4:02-4:30 p.m.

There I stood at the hood of my car, trying to figure out what the heck was going on, when the cop walked around the driver’s side of the car with his hand on his holster!

Naturally, I stood up a wee bit shocked, as he said, “What are you doing?” So I responded, well my car just died, I have no idea why…I was trying to get out of your way and it stopped.”

Then my day went even further down hill. The cop said, “Well, I was pulling you over anyway for expired tags.” At this point, I would have been content to just plop down on the side of the interstate and shed a few tears.

So I explained to him that I was int he process of moving and changing my permanent address to St. Louis and I was waiting until I had switched everything to my new address before I went to get a new drivers license since that is set to expire in a few months, I figured I would renew my tags at that time as well.

4:30 p.m.

Seems he didnt care at all about my conundrum and just asked for my license and proof of insurance, so I gave it to him as he went back to his car and I tried to figure out what was wrong with my car. Well, actually I called my Dad first…then I poked around some more.

When I couldn’t figure out what was wrong I realized I was going to have to get some roadside assistance…and around that time, the cop came back to my car with a ticket. I thought “Are you serious?! My car is broken and I just explained to you why my tags are expired by 2 weeks and that I was getting ready to take care of them!” But I just signed it like a good citizen.

So then, the cop asked me if I was going to call a tow truck, which I thought was odd because I’m not from here! Anyway after explaining that to the cop he said I could leave my car there but he would give me a ticket if I did because it is illegal to park in the median as it slows down traffic. (He says this as my car is well out of traffic, but his patrol car is parked squarely in the left lane, impeding traffic for miles.)

4:30-4:45 p.m.

Eventually I got him to call me a tow truck…so while I waited and wandered the median as I twittered my experience. Only later did I realize that I had said I was on I-44 when in fact I was on I-70. That kind of makes me feel dumb.

So I waited for about 15 minutes until the tow truck got there…with a friendly driver named Bob from Budget Towing. If you ever need a tow truck in the Wentzville area, I recommend Bob.

4:45 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.

Well I rode in the tow truck with Bob and he recommended a guy in Wentzville who he would trust to fix his car. If there is one thing I know it is this: trust the locals…and never go with a nation-wide chain.

So my car ended up at Dan’s Foreign Auto…

5:00 p.m.

So I road with Bob all the way to Dan’s Foreign Automotive in Wentzville. Where my car still sits, awaiting inspection.

The best part is that the mechanics there told me that apparently all the Foristell police (they are the town cops who ‘pulled me over’) ever do is run up and down the interstate, pulling people over and writing tickets for everything you can imagine. So that is great…I’m glad they have nothing better to do than stalk the interstate.

5:00 p.m.-6:05 p.m.

Well after the Tow truck dropped me off…I sat here and waited for Reem to come pick me up…she came out from the office and picked me up to take me home…thank God!

The best part? She got the word that I was broken down via twitter! Because I had twittered my crisis, I got rescued! Thank god they were not having outage issues at the time!

Anyway, apparently my distributer is out and I’m waiting for them to get a part in from St. Louis…so in the mean time I am renting a car from enterprise and bumming rides from Reem!

6:00 p.m.

Well Reem came to pick me and then kindly returned my to my home…where I spent the 3 day weekend indoors. As in: I did not open my doors until going to work Tuesday morning. Lame? Absolutely…but I needed to recover from such an odd day.

So I had to bum rides for a couple days, but now I’m sporting a Hyundai Elantra from Enterprise until I hear from Dan out in Wentzville.

So…last Friday was officially the most ridiculous day of my entire life.

Oh yeah, but the good news is that my paycheck got overnighted to Columbia and Adam deposited it…so life is good. Well, until I have to pay for getting my car fixed, that is.

UPDATE: Just heard that apparently my distributor was just full of oil so they cleaned it out and replaced a seal of some kind so it only cost me $40! But I’m not supposed to take it long distances…which is an issue since I need to make another trip to Columbia next week. But we will see about that…