Joy's parents lived in the small town of Skadovs'k down by the coast on the Black Sea. We had visited once already and really enjoyed our stay there. They always helped us with a good supply of pickled veggies and fruit from their victory garden - people in Ukrainie know how to live off the land! They even assured us, "come back for more."
We visited them several times through our years in Dnipro. One of the highlights was Tim and Joy's wedding. No expense was spared for their one and only child, and I had the honour of being invited.
From what I understand there are a lot of traditions involved, one requires presenting the happy couple with bread and salt. The wedding celebration can last days and sometimes weeks, with dancing, singing, long toasts, and a feast that can sometimes include the entire community.
A couple of cheer leaders were employed to get the party in the mood. Raising three glasses of vodka in rapid succession will do the trick! If I remember correctly the third toast is always in honour of women. There is rarely a lack of reasons for another toast. From there on it was lengthy hearty speeches, live music, singing, dancing, feasting, fun and fellowship.
Part of the tradition also involved "taking up a collection for the parents of the bride." They were now "supposedly poor" after having thrown this big feast :-) They were dressed up in funny clothes and everyone ended up down by the seaside where the parents and several others ended in the water. - All fun and games!
Another eventful trip to Skadovs’k happened towards the end of winter, and I remember for some reason I had to tighten the wheel-nuts on the van in the snow and ice before leaving. I think we needed to change the wheels around to even the wear on the rubber.
Things were going okay on the ice-covered roads following the Dnipr river south. The closer we got to the Black Sea the warmer the weather got, until all the snow and ice had disappeared.
I had just finished saying, “this is actually a pretty nice stretch of road,” and I was going at a fairly good speed, when all of a sudden I heard a bump from the back of the van and my back wheel came rolling alongside the car and into the ditch. We came to a screeching halt and got out to see what had happened.
As it turned out, when I had tightened the wheel nuts in the icy weather, some ice had come in between the nut and the rim, and when the ice started to melt the nuts came loose. Eventually all six nuts on the left back wheel had come off - ouch!
When the wheel flew off, the back end of the car tipped down and scraped along the asphalt, so brake drum, pads and bits and pieces scattered all over the road. We walked several hundred meters back to collect spare parts!
The anchor plate for the brake was now shaped like a half moon from the scraping. Oh dear! What to do?
We couldn’t just sit there, so I clamped the brake line, threw the pads in the car and by borrowing nuts from the other wheels we put the wayward wheel back on. Then we carefully limped the rest of the way to Joy’s parents in Skadovs'k.
Thankfully Joy’s dad had access to a garage, and he helped me do a better job securing the brake line. There was nothing else we could do, since there was nothing left to hold the bottom of the brake pads.
Call me crazy, but we drove for another three months with only three brakes! Eventually my son and I drove the old Nissan all the way to Denmark, where we sold it to a sea captain from Nigeria.The story doesn’t end here! I heard he shipped it to his cousin in Nigeria. From all I know it was still driving around down there as a taxi - with three brakes!
Next chapter is about how we got our next vehicle and that fateful trip back to base.
Chapter 10 ~ Elation and Devastation ( TOC )