The Car and the Marriage Proposal
In February 2018, I planned a weekend getaway to Cabo Frio, a very popular (and romantic) touristic destination near Rio de Janeiro.
The reason was simple: I was going to ask the hand of my girlfriend in marriage. We were already together for several years and I knew that it was the right time to bring our relationship to the next level.
So I did all the preparations: got a Friday off from my job, booked a very cute Bungalow by the beach, booked a special dinner at a fancy restaurant, talked with the restaurant manager so they would bring the engagement ring together with the dessert. It was going to be perfect!
When we woke up that Friday, I revealed the trip to my girlfriend, and we got really thrilled! We then spent a few hours organizing our luggage and off we went to the road. Cabo Frio was about 3 hours away from our home, so we would be reaching there around 13:00, and would have plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day and, then, go to the dinner I was planning for the last month.
I don't even have to say that, obviously, the car broke down on the road. See, I'm no car expert, but when a bunch of smoke started coming out of the hood of the car, I suspected something was wrong.
Apparently, the engine overheated because there was no water on the radiator. And the lack of water was because there was a leak on the radiator. Where this leak came from? Who knows!
Have in mind that our car, a Chevrolet Sonic, was pretty new (just 3 years old), and I always did the vehicle inspections as scheduled by the car dealership. So I wasn't really expecting that my perfect romantic weekend was going to crumble because of a car breakdown.
We were in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of anything nearby. We knew that there were several cities nearby if we walked for 45-60 minutes, but we thought that walking for an hour wouldn't be necessary: the cellphone had signal, and we could just call the insurance company to tow the car to the nearest repair shop.
The insurance company said that the tow truck would reach us in less than an hour. OK then!
It was incredibly hot that day, so we closed ourselves in the car and turned the air conditioning to the maximum.
After half an hour, nothing.
After an hour, nothing.
We were calling the insurance every 15 minutes or so, and the attendant kept saying that the tow was nearby us.
Then the car batteries ran off and we didn't had air conditioning anymore. We proceeded to start sweating like crazy.
We also had already drank the water we brought, as we were not rationing it (everything would be solved in half an hour, wouldn't it?). We weren't exactly planning on getting stranded for several hours under the hot summer Brazilian weather.
We also hadn't brought any food. The only thing edible in the car was some leftover candies we had tucked in some pocket of our luggage.
Long story short, we waited over 4 hours for the tow truck. I have absolutely no idea why they took so long, as we never really got an explanation. In my opinion, someone from the insurance company screw up the paperwork, as the driver didn't even knew that we were waiting there for several hours. According to the documentation he had in hands, he was called just 20 minutes before reaching us.
We were dehydrated; we were hungry; we were tired; we were stressed and nervous. And we definitely were NOT in a romantic mood to proceed with a marriage proposal.
In the end, everything worked out fairly well:
After arguing a bit with the insurance company on the phone, they let us rent a car for free so we could continue our trip without having to wait for the car to be repaired; we then proceeded to take the most expensive car they had available (a Jeep Grand Cherokee)!
I was able to sneak out from the Bungalow and call the restaurant; they were really nice, letting us to change our reservation from Friday to Saturday.
On the Saturday, she said yes and we've been engaged since them <3 we're planning our wedding ceremony for the next year (COVID quarantine messed up our original plans, but that's another story!)
As people say: Love is stronger than anything!
One extra fun fact: I was able to find only two photos of my old Chevy Sonic. I sold it in 2019 in order to buy a cheaper, low-cost car, and the only pictures of it are from the Classified Ads I've setup in order to sell it: one I used on the Thumbnail of this post, and this is the second one!
Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!
If you enjoyed, feel free to follow me as I'm routinely writing about Gaming, Investment, Fitness, and other random fun subjects like Travel and Metal Detecting!
*Unless stated otherwise, all images are Unless stated otherwise, all images are created and owned by me.
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Frustrating to see how plans for a special occasion are ruined. It is strange, but it seems that the insurance companies in these types of situations, when we require a towing service in these circumstances, respond the same way. I mention this because on one occasion, I also got stuck in the middle of the road due to the failure of a vehicle of the company I worked for and after waiting for several hours for the requested tow truck, when it arrived, he informed me that he had been notified more or less the 30 minutes before it took him to get to where he was stranded.
I like that in the end love triumphed and you were able to make your marriage proposal, congratulations for that. I liked your post and I will surely check your publications. Best regards my friend.
Plans are always on hands of god instead of us, it would be both uncorfortable and a bad moment to ask her hand dehidrated and anoyed by both the wait and the waste of time. Still it was a good try :)