Marooned in Montana and First World Problems

Over the last couple of days, I've noted on Facebook and Google+ that we've been having car trouble.

We had to make an unscheduled stop in Montana to repair the engine after overheating and blowing head gaskets.

Yesterday we checked into the nicest hotel we could find in Miles City while Deluxe Motors tracks down parts and gets the truck ready to travel again. (We chose the nicest hotel because we wanted this to feel like a detour on our vacation, not a prison sentence.)

Stephanie and I just got out of the spa 45 minutes ago. While we chatted there, we took stock of our situation. We agreed that we have absolutely nothing to complain about. The radiator overheated in the most benign of places, the small town of Forsyth. While it took a couple of hours to find a repair shop that could work on the truck immediately, then arrange a tow to that shop 45 miles away, we did most of that "fingers doing the walking" from an air conditioned waiting room of a nearby tire shop in Forsyth, not in the hot sun on the side of I-94 with traffic whizzing by.

The truck is now waiting for parts to be shipped from Minneapolis or wherever. My current worry is not letting my wet swimsuit soak the hotel room chair in which I sit.

Yes, the repairs are going cost a lot. But consider the bigger picture: My truck is getting repaired. How many people in the world drive a truck that is normally in good repair? How many use it to tow a sailboat between two spectacular cruising waters like the coast of Maine and Puget Sound? How may people can even afford to own a boat just for fun? These are problems of the One Percent, those people affluent enough to afford such luxuries.

Yes, it will cost money that I had hoped to spend on college educations for my daughters, their weddings, or some remodeling of our home. But how many people around the world can realistically plan on those expenses?

No, we have nothing to complain about. If we did, we would be just crybaby Americans griping about our First World problems. There a plenty of bigger problems that deserve our attention, problems like feeding, clothing, and housing the less fortunate, educating them, and cultivating the economies of the world so they have something useful to do, something to deliver value in their marketplaces.

Me? I'm going to take full advantage of this unplanned extension of my vacation to get some reading done and maybe write in my journal or draft a couple of essays.

And I'm going to make sure that this hotel room chair is dry.