Story 20: Turkey Tales

            
          
          A few years ago, my friend Mike gave me a great opportunity, a free trip to Turkey as part of a program to educate High School teachers about their country . I took a loan to be able to go on the trip, and it proved to me the “The trip of a lifetime.” In addition to a ten day Turkey trip, I also went to Central Asia for a month, and then spent two weeks in Hawaii with my family. A summer to remember.

  One night there in Turkey, we found ourselves in a beautiful town called Cappadoccia. The town was famous because they have ancient cities built into mountains that many civilizations had used to escape the Romans, and other groups as well. These ancient structures have been converted into hotels, restaurants, and museums. There was a lot to see, but for my friend, it wasn’t enough.

Prior to our trip, Mike had gotten it into his head that he wanted to learn how to drive stick shift.  He reasoned that knowing how to drive stick might help us escape from any difficult situation.  In a few weeks we were headed to Afghanistan so I agreed to learn too.  We took lessons in Brooklyn and in Suffolk county. There didn’t seem too many places to learn to drive stick anywhere else.

That night, Mike, Joel (a fellow teacher) and I rented a car and attempted to drive stick.  At first, things seemed to be going well. The roads were fairly straight, but after driving a few miles Michael took a right turn towards town, and that’s when things started to get hairy. We got stuck at a forty five degree angle while making a 3 point turn, but we didn’t know how to extricate our car. It didn’t help that behind us was a steep drop and it was dark outside with very few lights.  Back and forth the car went and the gears kept grinding and grinding. I worried that the clutch would be destroyed, and worse that we would fall back into the abyss.

“Do you want to give it a shot?” Michael asked.

I tried too, but my skill in driving stick was still very limited so I couldn’t do it. Joel faired no better because he had no experience at all.  I felt panicked as the car seemed to lurch backwards to the precipice.

Finally, Michael spotted a local person whom we hailed down. Mike asked him to assist us, and fortunately the man was able to guide our car back in the right direction. After returning to town, we dropped off the car with the “car rental agency” (the car belonged to the owner.)  fortunately for us the owner did not sense any damage to the clutch, and we got out of there without having to spend a thousand dollars to replace it. I still don’t know how we made it back alive.   For Mike though the danger seemed like business as usual.

Life Lesson 20: On the road of life always be a man  or a woman with a plan who knows where they are going, how to get there, and most importantly have friends to help you if you get lost or stuck along the way.