The is the Story of the Van
Wed., Aug. 16. 2006 2:55pm EDT
The two guys who brought our van from Wisconsin to Indiana wrote to tell us the tale...
Karl,
Tim Colford told me that I was supposed to send the pictures of us with the van to you. I thought that I would do one better and write the story down as to what happened. I will send the pictures separately just in case it is decided not to use the story in the newsletter (also I couldn't figure out how to attach them to the email anyway. I'm not too computer savvy. Savvy? I also wanted to keep the story written for myself. Being able to help you guys, even in such a small way, was awesome. I'm not sure that you could possibly understand the impact that you guys have had on my life. Because of your music I have become stronger in my faith. As you know, once that change starts to take place everything else changes also. So here is the story.
The Story of a Squirrelly Van
This here is the story of a van, which caused trouble for our favorite band. They got it fixed so we went on a trip and now it is in... Indiana.
So we leave the parody writing to J. The ApologetiX's van is back up and running. But not before Tim and I had a chance to adventure with it (or because of it depending on your point of view.)
After finding out about the condition of the van at Paper Fest, number of people asked to help out the band in any way that they could. Karl assured us that things were taken care of for the time being, but they might need people to relay the van back to them once it was fixed (it was returned to Madison WI for it's repairs.)
Tim got the call from Karl the next Sunday asking if we were serious about helping. Tim reassured him and gave me a call. I had just gotten in the door from a meeting across town ten minutes after Tim left the message on my machine. He asked when we could do it and I said that I was on night shift that week. That night would be the perfect time for me.
Fifteen minutes later we were on our way to Madison to pick up the van. That was when the adventure started. A miss communication left the keys inaccessible to us. Not to be discouraged easily we set about to find a way of contacting somebody to get them. Karl tried his hardest to do what he could on his end while we searched about the building to see if we could find a name or a service number to call. We came up empty handed.
Still not discouraged, we went to a nearby McDonald's and met a lady named Roxy. If you are ever in need I hope that you can find somebody as helpful as Roxy. She set us up with a phone book and pen as we started to call everybody in the Madison phone book with the last name of the service station. She even lent me her cell-phone so that we could work from both ends of the list. Few of the people we called even knew who the other people were (maybe we should have a family reunion for them.) It was only after we ran out of names that Roxy asked what we were doing. I explained it all to her and she liked it so much that she set us up with soda's and a discount on our meal. To thank her for all that she did I left a copy of one of ApologetiX's Cd's for her. I do think she will enjoy it a lot.
God bless you Roxy.
Now discouragement was setting in. We headed back to the service station to see if we could get any more info. On the way we stopped by a tow truck. The driver was in it. I reasoned that since we couldn't find a service vehicle at the repair shop, maybe this guy might have towed the van there in the first place. It was a long shot, but it was all we had at the time.
The guy's name was Ron. He hadn't towed the vehicle but I noticed that he was AAA certified. I asked if he might be able to cross-reference the tow account. He wasn't sure but he gave it a try and called it in. Again, no info available. We made our way back to the shop.
While searching around some more, it hit me like a brick in the face. In bold letters above the desk inside the window was the first names of the owners of the shop. They had been one of the once whom we had gotten machines for. The idea struck me for our last chance.
We went back to McDonald's and Roxy gave us the phone book back. We looked up the name and got an address. Roxy helped us orientate ourselves and we went to check out the address to see if anybody was home.
Alas, it was another dead end. Nobody was home. Our final shot for the night had been taken. However, we now had every piece of information we needed to get things set up for the following night. So we headed home.
I rearranged my schedule a bit and Tim made the phone calls to arrange things. We took off for Madison again the following night. The only hiccup that we ran into was the fact that the check-engine light was on. Tim, being far more of the mechanic than I, inspected it and said that the engine was running fine. It was probably just a loose wire or connection. Let us all pray that he was right.
The van made it to the drop off point in Indiana without a problem
So ends our adventure with the "Squirrelly Van."
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