Road-Tripping with a Faulty Gauge and a Charcuterie Board
Maybe because I travel so seldom and strange things happen when I do, every road trip feels like a revelatory reminder: whatever else we are, we are a country in which people help strangers.
Maybe because I travel so seldom and strange things happen when I do, every road trip feels like a revelatory reminder: whatever else we are—or whatever we periodically threaten to become—we are a country in which people help strangers. Mutual aid is in our national DNA. The town where I pulled over last weekend could have been a watering hole on the route of a wagon train (if wagon trains passed through Virginia).
I was driving to Front Royal to meet my client and friend Stacy Lyn for breakfast—she was in Virginia to give talks at the Homesteaders of America conference, so it was a rare chance to say "hi" in person on my way to visit friends in Maryland. Then the low tire pressure light came on as I was passing through Staunton (pronounced "Stanton").
I exited the highway and stopped at the first gas station I saw, an old relic of a place. As I pulled up to the weather-beaten air pump, I noticed a black SUV with tinted windows parked between me and the access road. When I stepped out, alert for signs of trouble, the driver's side door of the SUV opened.
"First, you look ADORABLE," a perfectly coiffed middle-aged blonde woman declared in a Southern accent.
"Oh! Thank you." I was wearing a burgundy floral tunic dress and black leggings with a silver necklace and jean jacket—cute but comfortable for a long drive.
"People just don't dress up anymore, and I think that's sad. I still do," she waved down at her fashionable pantsuit, "and I just wanna say, good for us!"
Then she set about rescuing me, a lone stranger with car trouble. "That pump doesn't work. I always use the air pump at Sheetz—it's free. There's a Sheetz about three miles in the direction you're going, and another one back that way about half a mile."
I thanked her profusely, and then she zipped away back to her life. As for which Sheetz, I took the shorter road, and that made all the difference.
Sheetz stores are always busy, brightly lit places to stop for gas and, if you're desperate, a snack. They also have fancy digital air pumps. So as I tried to inflate the front left tire, which was low by two pounds, I could see clearly on the readout that the pressure was going down, not up. Was the tire stem bent? Was I not holding my mouth right? Maybe the duct tape around the air hose was a clue. No matter what angle I tried, the air hissed out instead of in. I confirmed with my own tire gauge that the tire was almost flat now.
A man waiting for the pump came around to see what was taking so long. I explained the situation and asked if he wouldn't mind giving it try. He got the same result. Then he tried it on his own tire...and it worked. "That tells me it's a problem with your tire or tire stem," he said. It seemed like the logical conclusion.
So I called AAA—or called a computer to initiate a text exchange because that's how they roll in 2026. The wait for help would be...2 hours. Then I got a snack and hovered in limbo. A woman pulled up, frazzled, and attached the air nozzle to her tire. I saw before she did that the digital numbers were going down. "Wait!" I flailed my arms. "The pump is not working right." She looked up at the numbers and then at me with wide, stunned eyes, as if unsure whether this were the next in a long line of bad things to happen to her that day, or a reprieve from it. When I explained the thing had flattened my tire, too, she muttered thanks and drove off.
Apparently, the problem wasn't my tire stem, but I wasn't sure if the tire had enough air left in it to get safely to another gas station. So I just sat in my car and chewed the kind of rubbery, flavorless boiled egg that comes shrink-wrapped at places like Sheetz.
Next to arrive was a weathered blue van driven by a tall, stringbean-thin man in his 60s with dreadlocks. He, too, was just passing through, which I could tell by the fact that he pronounced Staunton like "Stawnton." The air pump didn't like his tire, either. He was going to New York, he said. Something in his voice conveyed that this journey was not just a visit but a picking up of roots to start anew elsewhere, a hard and brave thing. We wished each other safe travels. I alerted the Sheetz clerk that the air pump was definitely broken and then trotted back to warn more strangers like a wild-eyed but cutely dressed prophet.
The next woman, forewarned, was able to remove the nozzle before the pressure had gone down more than a couple of pounds. Grateful for the heads up, she told me that a WaWa nearby had an air pump. By then, though, I'd been at that air pump way too long. I texted Stacy Lyn to explain that to my great regret, I wouldn't be able to make it in time. She called right away, was very kind, and told me the same thing had happened to her at an air pump once. Her husband asked if I needed any help, no small offer from 90 minutes away. As we were talking, the last woman returned to shout through her window, "The air pump at the WaWa works great!" She gave me turn-by-turn directions—it was less than half a mile away.
After canceling the AAA dispatch, I was about to drive off when two young Hispanic men drove up in an old car. I launched into what was now my polished "don't use the air pump" spiel. The driver smiled shyly and said, "I speak no English." So I whipped out my phone and pulled up a translation app. He waited patiently as I typed and then showed him the screen. With a sheepish smile, he shrugged and gestured that he was going to give it a try anyway. He probably thought I was a crazy lady. When the pump didn't work, I typed "Go to the WaWa." It was time for me to do the same.
Later, the verdict was this: my tire had been fine before the fancy digital pump with the duct-taped hose let the air out of it; I just had a tetchy sensor or warning mechanism. Somehow, false digital signs that create the problems they purport to fix have something to say about America, too.
On the road again, I stopped at a Food Lion to find some flowers to bring my hosts. With limited options, I chose a colorful Day of the Dead planter with a tiny cactus. The teen clerk in hijab at the register exclaimed, "That's so cute! My mom would love that."
The digital card reader beeped at me for no apparent reason, "ERROR." The clerk playfully tssked, “It's rude—it has no manners.”
That night in Annapolis, we had a lovely Italian dinner that began with a charcuterie board, each of us free to munch on the bits we liked best. (I was obsessed with the olives.) The chef came by to ask how we liked his creation. He looked like a biker dude but was an artist—and maybe also a biker dude.
By coincidence, Stacy Lyn has a new recipe post on how to make a charcuterie board. I can't wait to try it.
Stacy Lyn