Weekend Adventures

The Reynolds own a hunting business here in Antalya. They take foreigners out into the country to shoot Wild Turkish Boar. They also have two Bloodhounds and lots of houseplants which means that when they want to go on a weekend camping adventure with their five children, someone must come and take care of their beautiful house. The house is located about 15 minutes outside of town in the mountains and above the stifling humidity that suffocates the city. There is no mass transportation way out here in the boonies so Andrew and I needed a vehicle to commute.

Pictured above is the car we ended up with. It is a white Ford Taunus from an unknown year (essentially a watered down Taurus Ford sold in Europe and Argentina in the early 1980’s). I searched around for an owner’s manual but it was missing, along with the proof of insurance and vehicle registration. The car belongs to some retired Turkish police officer named Yusef that the Reynolds know somehow. It has no heat or a/c, no radio, and the key falls out of the ignition occasionally. The body shows signs of multiple traffic incidents. The passenger seat also lacks a spring recoil on the seatbelt so the entire safety restraint sits in my lap like a limp noodle. While this vehicle seems simple and un-interesting from the outside, the secrets lying beneath the hood caused Andrew and I some significant unpleasantness on this weekend.

After a relaxing and uneventful Friday night dining and enjoying the pool, we decided to spice up our day with a trip into town to catch a movie. After a hearty late breakfast we drove down from the mountain, got some gas and headed to the theater. Even when it is running normally the car sounds awful. 1st gear is tricky to get into and the car likes to slip from 1st into reverse so Andrew is forced to start from 3rd gear all the time. However, about 10 minutes from the theater Andrew noticed something was seriously wrong. As we made an illegal u-turn in a busy intersection, the car inexplicably died. Andrew tried to restart it but failed. The light turned and we suddenly found ourselves blocking 2/3 of the eastbound lane on one of the largest roads in Antalya. We were almost immediately surrounded by unhappy Turkish taxis and dolmuş drivers. We leaped from the car and tried to push the it through traffic and up the curb. The curb was to steep to mount so Andrew jumped back into the driver’s seat and I pushed him backwards down a one-way turn lane to a semi-secure parking location. With the car out of immediate danger and no way to contact help we decided to walk three blocks and enjoy our movie.

The movie we decided to see was Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen (subtitled in Turkish). Entire volumes could be written documenting the plot inconsistencies in this film. While I must admit I was entertained for 117 minutes, the errors were so blatant they were impossible to miss. The issue that annoyed me the most was that the movie assumes the entire Middle East is the size of lower Manhattan and that the Pyramids at Giza, Petra and the Red Sea are all within easy walking distance of one another. In reality they are separated by a collective 253 miles, an international water way, and two closed Israeli boarder crossings. During the film two of the robots are magically resurrected from the dead by shoving chunks of metal into their chests. I could not help wishing that Yusef’s dead Ford Taunus could be similarly revived.

However, God always provides and during the intermission (Yes, Turkish movies have a planned 10 minute intermission) we realized that a friend from the cultural center who likes to fix cars was in the same theater with us. After we had finished watching the film we walked over to the car. Upon closer examination we discovered that we had run out of fuel. When we had filled up in the morning, Andrew had put petrol in the car. Unbeknownst to us Yusef had installed a natural gas fuel tank and now the car was out of natural gas. Our mechanic friend switched us over to petrol, but the car refused to idle properly when it was being fed gasoline. Thus for the next half and hour we desperately searched for a gas station; stalling out every time we encountered a traffic light, roundabout or when a brainless dolmuş driver cut us off. Finally we found an M-OIL, filled up, switched the fuel source back, and ventured back onto the highway.

To celebrate our safe return to the Reynolds we cooked ourselves spaghetti and meatballs and stayed up late watching downloaded TV episodes. The next morning I woke up to our next little adventure. Andrew and I sleep in the master bedroom because it is the only one with a clima. To keep the cool air in the room I shut the door before I passed out on a mattress on the floor. What I had failed to realize is that the master bedroom door lacks a doorknob. Therefore when I got up on Sunday morning I discovered that we were locked into the room. In order to escape our self-created prison I was forced to squeeze through a window and Andrew had to jump off the roof. Getting the door to open again required removing the doorknob from another door and re-installing the entire apparatus on the broken door. It is a good thing that household maintenance is my favorite way to wake up on Sunday morning.

Church was a little sparse and afterwards Renata five of us out into the countryside for an authentic Turkish lunch in a köşk complete with homemade ayran. It was Ruth’s birthday so some of the girls baked a cheesecake and we celebrated back at Renata’s with ice cream and drinks. It was a great day spent with great company. Andrew picked me up in Yusef’s demon mobile at 8 so we could drive up and feed the hounds. Half way home the car overheated and we had to pull over at the same M-OIL that had rescued us less than 36 hours before. Yusef apparently neglected to put any water in the radiator and we had no way of knowing the engine was running hot until we smelled something burning. After about a half hour sipping tea at the service station we filled it with water and made it up the hill to the house. This is my last night here and once the car drops me off at Tömer tomorrow I can wash my hands of it forever.