This weekend I attended the National Collegiate Leadership Conference in Tucson Arizona. If you’re ever passing by Tucson, I’d suggest you stop to take a look at all the interesting 4th avenue shops and restaurants. A great town to ‘buy local’ in, Tucson is mostly a place where I’ve gone for 2 years now to attend a conference.
The first year, my manager Sam at the Center for Student Involvement asked me and my coworkers if we were interested in attending. Turned out that due to financial matters I was the only one that could attend, so Sam and I took my newly acquired Chevy Lumina the 6.5 hour drive from San Diego into the Tucson sun. We had a great time at the conference and determined that we would have to bring a delegation back the next year.
The year quickly passed and in January I reserved 4 spots for the 2010 conference. It was a surprising struggle to get my peer Leadership Consultants at work to agree to disappear to Arizona in the midst of midterms and the business of life, but eventually 3 girls agreed to definitely attend.
Friday we piled into my car at 8am to make sure we got to the conference in time for the free meal and evening sessions. Now, my car is great but on the drive to Tucson last year it had a tough time on the large hills just east of San Diego. I was a little worried but was a responsible car owner and made sure my oil was changed, my coolant was clean and full and the tires had enough air. We hit the road with smiles and music (and one girl sleeping in the backseat after 5 minutes of driving with an urge to get to Tucson but have fun along the way.
Unplanned, the excitement came to us when driving up the big worrisome hill, my car lost power and started smoking. “Alright” I though, “this kinda happened before the last time I drove this hill”. We pulled over to the side of the road and decided to let the car have a rest (and hopefully) stop smoking. After a few minutes, the smoke wasn’t getting any less dense so I decided to go open the hood to let it air out.
And then the smoke made perfect sense as there was a small FIRE in the engine. I walked as calmly as I could back to the car to ask the girls for water and when they asked why I mentioned the fire situation. They didn’t stay quite as cool as me but we managed to find 1 full water bottle and I poured it on hoping that it wasn’t one of those fires you hear about where water actually makes it worse. Turns out it wasn’t and I masterfully extinguished the fire. Problem was tat my car had been on fire in the first place, so I of course called up Grandpa.
I explained what happened and where the fire was and asked meakly “So do you think I could maybe drive it up to the next exit and find a shop? ….Oh and what about driving it the rest of the way to Tucson?” Well those requests were immediately shut down and after hearing Gram’s diagnostic I begrudgingly called I tow truck. I just got new insurance so I don’t know towing is covered, but I knew I had to do it anyway.
With the tow truck on the way, the girls and I sat and enjoyed each others company and I am so glad that none of them freaked out or got angry at the situation. Well, five minutes later a tow truck showed up with our excited cheering. Except that it wasn’t the company I had called. I asked him how much he would charge ($250 is what he said) and then called the other company that said they were on their way. The guy on the phone flipped out when I told him another truck had pulled up to offer his help (I guess that’s illegal) and he said he’d charge me just $85 if I got diagnostics with him when we got the car to his shop. We took that option and sent Luco’s towing back on their way.
So to finish up the story, one of the girls’ boyfriend drove the hour to Alpine to pick us up and take us back to San Diego where we loaded into another (smaller) car and headed back on our way. By this point we had lost 5 hours of the day and didn’t arrive in Tucson until 10:30pm (1 hour time difference also made an impact). Well, we had planned to stay with some students who offered to host out-of-towners so the cost of the trip was less. 10:30 on a Friday night isn’t exactly the best time to catch a student at home so we arrived and the hosting coordinator didn’t have a place for us to stay and suggested we go have dinner while he tried to make arrangements.
Everything of course worked out fine and we’re now on the road back to San Diego. The conference was again spectacular, with a series of informative and thought-provoking workshops lead by professionals and students. I too presented to a very enthused audience and look forward to sending a list of people the presentation that I gave with some other notes and references for their further information.
I love going to conference like the NCLC for the opportunity to meet and talk with students from across the country and share ideas for each of our personal betterment. Also, the keynote speaker got me really excited for an upcoming opportunity I have in Texas to speak!
The drive home was uneventful but I am somewhat dreading hearing from the auto place tomorrow when they update me on the damage done to my poor car. That thing has given me loads of trouble already and is not something I want to be investing money into, especially as I plan to rid myself of it come graduation when I take off for Europe (another story I’ll have to tell). Cross your fingers for me that it’s not too bad/expensive!
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