I don’t have a lot to contextualize just how horribly my cross country drive in my started. Hell, I don’t think anyone has ever driven to their own tow truck before.

First, the brakes seized on the six mile drive to the parts store to replace the oil cap that kept blowing off my engine.

In a turn of events I still can’t quite explain, I then drove to my own tow truck, which took my Bug to a repair shop that replaced a too-tight rod in my master cylinder and got me back on the road.

Then I replaced my oil cap and put on a new carburetor in a nearby parking lot, and the car promptly overheated an hour down the road from there. It turned out that a fist-sized wad of wires got caught in my cooling fan and shut my engine down. I pulled those out, wiped off the oil dripping all over my engine bay, and waited until sunset for everything to cool down.