We woke up with every intention to make it to the finish line by early afternoon. We could not start the rickshaw. The spark plug was broken and some random Indian had come and help us. Finally, we got on the road. Everything was going smoothly until the spark plug just completely stopped working and Antoine replaced it all on his own. He’s very proud of himself for fixing the rickshaw all on his own.
A few hours later, the rickshaw stopped working again. We were 30km away from the finish line and in the middle of nowhere. He replaced the spark plug again, but it still wouldn’t start. We tried to jumpstart the rickshaw, but something was still not working. Two kids showed up in school uniform on bikes and they asked for pens, food, money, and water. Antoine gave both of them 10 rupees each, and a water bottle with 3 quarters left in it. They stuck around asking for more, as we attempted to fix the rickshaw. The nearest mechanic was one kilometer away, and for some reason, the kids wouldn’t go get him for us. So we sat and texted other rickshaw runners for help.
A white vine pulls up next to us and they speak to Antoine as he’s trying to figure out the problem. The driver pulls up and parks in front of Rickshaw Parker and 10 to 15 Indian men walk out, all ready to help us out. No one can find the problem. So they ask us if we have any rope. We have two bundles of rope from Cochin and they tie them together with one end around the front of the rickshaw and the other end attached to a car that came out of nowhere. Our rope broke twice before they took out their own rope and drove us all the any to our finish line. The nice men didn’t even charge us for towing us 30 kilometers. They could only drop us off in front of the hotel that is the finish line, so we had to push our rickshaw the rest of the way. Well, Antoine pushed while I filmed the whole thing from inside. We barely make it up to the podium, take our picture, and park the rickshaw with all the other finished rickshaws. We meet everyone else and hear their stories of what went wrong.
Now, all we can do is sit back, relax, and drink a beer with our fellow finishers. Maybe we will go and check out Pakistan while we are here and so close to that border.
-Jamie