Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

This post is an exercise in imagination and any resemblance to real characters is purely coincidental

Once upon a time, there were two men, quite mature and in their sixties, the Carpathian Master Driver and his Companion. The companion’s name was Puffy.

They decided to take the tar.dutch RE, hook it up to an Engine, and hit the road. The tar.dutch, being a Romanian Edition, didn’t have an internal engine; it just had wheels and was towed with all the modern towing equipment but towed nevertheless: chug-chug, chug-chug, not whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-beep-beep like the original. A third-world tardis wannabe, you know!

Around three in the morning, as per the good ol’ country’s tradition of leaving at the crack of dawn to beat the traffic, the tar.dutch was loaded, the Engine revved up, and The Carpathian Master Driver announced in a very casual tone: “Puffy, I don’t have lights in the Engine’s cabin because my battery isn’t new; it’s the original one, about sixteen years old, so don’t freak out, but I have to run only the essentials.”

Just as casually came the next announcement: “Puffy, go to the back of the tar.dutch and tell me if the brake lights come on. I don’t think they’re working. Something’s wrong. Talk to me loud and clear, I can’t understand a thing, speak up, I can’t hear you!”

Half an hour later, the brake lights still didn’t work, but the turn signals had started flashing, and they had woken up the neighbors with all the yelling and testing. The neighbors were shouting from their windows: “Yo, Puffy, tell him the damn lights work and get lost already, so we can get back to sleep!”

They left, and finally, a blessed silence fell over the neighborhood. They set off on a long journey, estimated to be about seven hours.

In the Romanian tar.dutch, you’re not allowed, by law, to sit inside while on the road, so the guys were riding the Engine: The Carpathian Master Driver at the wheel (obviously), Puffy to his right, navigating from between his legs. The Engine, like the battery, was about sixteen years old and had no navigator, no Bluetooth, nothing. It was just an honest, reliable Engine running on diesel fuel and oil. Between Puffy’s legs was a phone, which had Bluetooth, wi-fi, and a navigator. The Bluetooth and wi-fi were useless, but the navigator proved itself extremely helpful.

About an hour later, a desperate driver overtook them, signaling with his headlights and gesturing wildly. At 4:30 am they were the only ones on the road. The Carpathian Master Driver felt the need to speed up and overtake him back, because you don’t engage with every weirdo, who happens by, especially at that wee hour. The driver, persistent, stuck close to the tar.dutch. At a stop light, he stuck his head and half his body out the window, shouting: “Yo, dudes, your tar.dutch’s turn signals are working in reverse order.”

The Carpathian Master Driver muttered a curse and signaled in reverse all the way to their destination, but only after re-testing the signals at a gas station, where they had to stop urgently because the Engine had consumed all its oil. It needed to be fed because an Engine without oil goes “AAaaa PFFFfffff…” and stops. Abruptly.

At every stop until their destination, Puffy witnessed the practical definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s incredible in how many ways you can fiddle with a contacts adapter with no result. The Sonic Screwdriver proved to be useless.

Only the arrival of their Friend, who had come down South with his quick and nervous orange Japanese car, solved the problem. The Friend took the adapter from his Car, tested it on the tar.dutch, and the adapter worked flawlessly. The signals signaled correctly, the brakes lit up, and so the adapter quietly changed owners.

Meanwhile, the tar.dutch didn’t like to be left out and decided to contribute to the general fun by slightly flooding itself with black water from the tank. For those who don’t know, black water consists of chemically dissolved poop and pee. It doesn’t smell exactly like feces, but it doesn’t exactly smell automotive either. For those who don’t know, generally, nothing is left on the floor in the tar.dutch. Puffy didn’t know and watched helplessly as his espadrilles floated gracefully away in a puddle of poop. After four washes, he threw them away.

The Friend, happy to have solved the adapter problem, started offering gratuitous solutions for the black water tank. Unfortunately, he had fallen into a bottle of Carpathian Single Malt, and all that could be heard from inside the bottle was a muffled “… overflow. I made satellites, I know, it’s the overflow.” Puffy is still scratching his head trying to wrap his brain around the connection between satellites and overflow. Puffy’s solution, on the other hand, was the epitome of simplicity: “let’s just empty the tank proactively.”

The Engine, in keeping with its adverse personality, suddenly decided to stop illuminating with the left headlight. It blinked undecidedly for a second, then simply gave up. The Carpathian Master Driver and the Friend tried to fix it as best they knew, without success. Remove the headlight, change the bulb, put the headlight back, change the fuse, call the mechanic, clean the contacts… Again, the Sonic Screwdriver proved itself to be universally useless.

The Carpathian Master Driver and his Companion continued their trip, down Southeast this time, as best as they could, quite well actually, but with only one headlight, until the first gas station, where they had to stop urgently because the Engine had, with all its familiar, loudly audible protests, again consumed all its oil. It needed to be fed because an Engine without oil goes “AAaaa PFFFfffff…” and stops. Abruptly. When The Carpathian Master Driver slammed the hood in frustration and said, “Come on, Puffy, let’s go,” the left headlight woke up, and it’s still working properly, as it should’ve from the beginning.

Nothing else to report, except that by the Great Salt Lake, in the middle of nowhere, everything had to rely on the tar.dutch’s battery because there was no electricity around.

And so The Carpathian Master Driver, in his quest for perfection, almost plunged everything into darkness. Quite the dramatic situation unfolded as the beer, wine, and mineral water slowly warmed up – the second fridge stopped running. Of course, these things always happen when there’s no electricity, so there’s no point blaming the fridge itself. The first fridge, on the other hand, was a marvel of technology, running on gas. It presented quite the conundrum: should one save the meat or keep the booze chill?

Until then, things with the solar panels were going swimmingly, keeping the battery at a cool 100%. But then, after a bit of real Doctor Who-style tinkering, the battery decided to pull off an “eee-ooo-boom” stunt and nosedive to 30%. It hung out there for a bit, just when everyone thought it might charge itself, it pulled off another “eee-ooo-boom” stunt and landed right back at 30%. Apparently, some mysterious things were happening with the “…tor family: capacitor, transistor, invertor …” Surprisingly, it was solved with simple reset, the last resort of the frustrated, but this required taking half of the tar.dutch apart. The ultimate solution? “Let’s install an on/off switch to make it easier next time. Problem solved!”

At the end of their parade, their seemingly endless panorama of cosmic futility, Puffy was just chilling, doing his thing, which was nothing. He watched another guy working, trying to look like he knew what was up, like his engineering college days weren’t totally wasted. When he got tired of doing nothing, he strolled over to the Great Salt Lake for a quick bathroom break. After that, he took some pics and sipped on a cool spritzer.

That’s what he did for three whole days, and it seemed like he was having a pretty good time!

Glossary of Terms

​tar.dutch – serves the same purpose as a tardis, but this one is in the shape of a trailer, made in The Netherlands in 1988, by the Dutch, hence the name.

​As with a tardis, “Bigger on the inside” is a very good way to describe it.

​The Carpathian Master Driver is a not a simple Romanian Master Driver. But what is a Romanian Master Driver? It is that driver who runs the red lights and stops at the green lights, because what if another Romanian Master Driver comes from another direction. Why “Carpathian”, though? Because a Carpathian driver knows that in his native country driving is an extreme sport, and his skills are so refined that he actually stops at the red lights.​

Yodeling Screwdriver – is like that fictional multifunctional tool used by the Doctor Who, but instead of being the sonic kind, this one yodels. It’s still useless.​

Disclaimer – Initially, I wanted to use the characters and names from the BBC series, but at the last minute, I remembered they’re copyrighted. So, I rewrote my piece. It lost some of its charm, but I write for fun, and the last thing I want is an army of BBC lawyers chasing after me.