Bye Bye Rusty

Rusty is officially dead. How did he (or rather it) die? Well he's been kinda dying for awhile now. Yuk Yee and Karen kindly gave us their car when they left and we figured that it wasnt worth spending so much money on repairs for it. So when we left for church camp, the water pump was leaking and we were having problems with the car overheating. But by the time we made it to Shoalhaven, i think Rusty was on its death throes. So after all the fun we had during church camp (will try and blog more about that later on) when it was time to go home, Rusty's engine just gave out after driving for half an hour. It was a great adventure we had! Tom, Rus & Jack were driving behind us and so noticed that we stopped at the side of the road and they stopped too
So we had to call NRMA to come but coz we were like in the middle of nowhere, i didn't know exactly where we were so they sent the NRMA team from Nowra to try and look for us. Almost an hour later, we get a call back saying that we're actually at the border of Berry (the next town) and so they have to send their team from Berry over. So we had to wait another hour before someone came. The guy came, stayed about 5 minutes, declared the engine dead and left us saying that he'd call the towtruck to come for us. So that was another wait. but in the meantime, we entertained ourselves taking pictures of Rusty. Tom's car in the meantime had to leave coz Jack was rushing back to Sydney to fly off to HK that night. It was a really long wait. From the time our car broke down to when the tow truck arrived, it took like 3 hours! But good company and lots of things to share with each other about church camp made it all the more bearable. Also, the love of fellow brothers and sisters made things great as well. From all the phone calls and sms-es finding out if we were ok, to Tom asking Victor Y to come back and at least take out all the equipment etc that was in our car back to Sydney for us, we were really touched and encouraged by those little gestures. Thanks also to the passengers in Victor's car who had to go onto the bus at Kiama to make room for the stuff that we were carrying in our car. The stuff in our station wagon basically took up all the space in Victor's car. By then, we'd also realised that Rusty was definitely dead and that we'd not be able to drive him back to Sydney so we also managed to squeeze our bags etc into Victor's car so we wouldn't have to carry too much on the train. From bright sunlight to sun down, that showed how long we waited.....and waited.....but in the meantime, there was actually an Aussie guy who was really really nice. He actually bothered to stop to car to come out and find out if we were ok. Merrill and I were really touched by his kindness and concern because quite simply, we admitted that we would probably have been like the rest of the cars and just have continued driving on, not caring about whether we were alright. but on the other side of the spectrum, there are really horrible people as well. like when we were sitting in the car waiting for NRMA to come, someone actually drove by and threw an egg at our car. didn't do too much damage as the egg only hit the rear wheel but you could have felt the whole car shake when it got hit by the egg. that was really horrible and absolutely uncalled for. by the way, if you're wondering why Rusty is called Rusty, doreen named it coz of the licence plate number RUS 459 and also coz the body of the car was rusty! hehe..... anyway we got to sit in the tow truck (good thing there was only the 2 of us! coz the cab of the tow truck could only fit another 2 people besides the driver) it was really fun sitting in the tow truck coz i've never really sat in such a big vehicle before and the driver was quite a nice guy although a little uncommunicative. like how he hooked up the car to his truck and then walked back to the driver's side of his truck and kinda climbed in leaving us wondering if he was going to abandon us by the side of the road. only a few seconds later, we realised that he had to climb into the truck to open up the passenger door for us from the inside of the truck. anyway he helped us to work through our options like whether we should get a second-hand engine and have it installed in the car or just scrap the car. We worked out that it wasnt worth spending a couple of thousand dollars just to get the engine replaced since the car wasn't worth that much so we told him that we were goin to scrap it. He was then nice enough to help us take off the licence plate of the car so that we could just walk away from Rusty and never see him again. Getting the licence plate is so that we can go to RTA and de-register the car and get some money back. Guess the guy will probably be taking Rusty to the junkyard for us. Saves us the hassle of having to drive or find our way back to Berry to do it. So anyway after that, we walked to the train station and managed to catch the train back to Central but that was another 3 hours train ride back to Central but it was really fun coz the country trains are not powered by electricity but by motors so they sound really different from the city trains. i think they sound more like giant trucks than anything. that's us in the train taking a picture before the camera battery died. The 3 hour ride back was long but enjoyable, made better with the company, conversation and the thought of Korean beancurd stew for dinner. Hehe.....Thought the train ride back would have been better had it been in the day so we could enjoy the scenery as we took the train but it was still alright. So all in all it took us almost half a day to get back to Sydney but it was a real adventure all around. And now, we are back to public transport, walking and relying on people's generosity for car rides!

Bye Bye Rusty (November 2006 to April 2007). It was a great ride =)