ATVS on Aegina: Part 3

So, this is shaping up to be a story of many parts... time is rather limited right now because classes are wrapping up. I come home in less than 4 weeks!

When we last left off, I had just felt my phone ring. I pulled it out, and saw that I had a text message. Now, my phone here is pretty basic and it doesn't tell me things like who my missed calls or text messages are from, so all I had was a text message saying "You have one new voicemail." I didn't have very much money left on my phone (it's all pre-paid here), so I just called Aubrey since it seemed pretty unlikely that anyone else would have been calling me. She answered with a rather upset, "Where are you guys?" A brief back and forth ensued in which it turned out that they had missed the gas station and run out of gas somewhere behind us. Aubrey called me back so I'd still have a little bit of time left on my phone, and while I was waiting for her to call me back, I tried to explain what was going on to everyone else. Once we had all the details from her, we realized pretty quickly that we'd need to go back and find them and then go get some gas for the ATV. The other two pairs decided they didn't want to waste the time it would take, so it was just Matt and I who headed back to find them.

It actually didn't take us very long at all to locate Sara and Aubrey -- two girls sitting on the side of the road with an ATV wasn't hard to miss. They weren't all that thrilled with the situation, so Sara and I ended up switching places so it wouldn't be the same people stuck on the side of the road for the whole time. Sara and Matt headed off in search of the gas station and Aubrey and I settled in to make the most of our stranded time. We were very good stranded people and went through the random things we had in our wallets, did a little modeling on the ATV, and had a karaoke session with Aubrey's ipod, but the whole time we were dreading a call from Matt and Sara saying that they ran out of gas too and were stuck. At this point, we'd realized that Aubrey and I were the only one with cellphones and a good amount of cash -- Matt's stuff was with Carly, who'd left and Sara had left her phone in Athens and was having trouble with her ATM card, so they'd taken Aubrey's phone with them just in case.

Of course, as luck would have it, about 20 minutes after they had left, my phone rang again. It was Matt -- apparently they had made a wrong turn at some point and were out of gas at the top of a hill. The two of them were going to try to roll the ATV down the hill and then carry it to the gas station, so they wanted to let us know it would probably be a while longer before they got back with the gas. I hung up and relayed the story to Aubrey, and the two of us decided to gather up our stuff and start walking into the little town that was up ahead to see if we could find a gas station, since it seemed like the most logical way to solve the situation. We passed a house with an old man in the yard and attempted to use our very limited Greek to ask the way to a petrol station, but we're pretty sure we actually ended up just confusing them and ourselves, and we think they might have given us directions to a bus station. We didn't know the word for gas in Greek, so we were saying things like "For the car" and gesturing -- it was actually a pretty amusing experience in a less than ideal situation. We thanked the men and continued down the road, not really any more informed as to where a gas station might be when my phone rang again. It was Matt again, and he exclaimed "Where are you guys??" He and Sara were back at the ATV and were pretty surprised not to see us there. We turned around to head back, and as we walked, Aubrey and I commented on how quickly they made it back -- it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes since we left. It wasn't until then that it hit me that it was entirely possible that they hadn't actually run out of gas and had been playing a trick on us. From living with Dad and his jokes for 20 years, I had sort of suspected it when Matt called, but it just really didn't seem like a situation where they'd do something like that, so I figured it was true. We got back to them, and Aubrey goes, "You guys better have been telling the truth about running out of gas!" to which they both started laughing a little bit. She was furious, and I was torn between annoyance and amusement, but annoyance was definitely winning. We stalked past them, grabbing the container of gas on our way. After pouring most of the gas into the tank and some of it onto the seat, and cleaning up the spill with hand sanitizer, we got on, and Aubrey tried to start it. We were going to explore the island on our own and that was that -- who needs people who play tricks on their friends? Of course, it wouldn't start, and as we sat there, Matt and Sara were walking closer and closer. They were actually standing right next to us and going, "Guys, please forgive us, we're really sorry. We'll follow you guys for the rest of the day if you want" and Matt was saying, "At least let me start it for you and then you can storm off if you still want to" when Aubrey finally got the starter to catch. We pulled away and zoomed off down the road, leaving them standing on the side of the road fairly far from their ATV. They knew we were headed to the Temple of Aphaea and we figured they could follow us if they really wanted to be with us. We were having a great time, enjoying the sites and still fuming a little bit, when all of a sudden, it happened.