Thursday, November 21, 2002

I returned to Artsakh yesterday and pulled into Stepanagert around 4 PM.

After taking care of some business and eating dinner at a friends house, I headed to Marturni.

As I was not 5 kilometers out of Aghdam, I noticed my oil-pressure gage doing some funny things. I kept watching it go up and down and then it went to zero.

I immediately stopped the car and checked under the hood to see oil everywhere. I looked under the car to see that I must have hit the bottom of the car and damaged the oil-pan, which oil was running from.

It was dark, and the closest sign of life was to my left, where there is an Azeri village.

The Azeri village was really not an option, since between us was a land-mine field. I waited and in about 3 minutes, I saw a car coming from the direction of Martuni.

I signaled to the car with my flashlight and it stopped. It was a cop car on its way to Stepanagert.

They radioed to Martuni:

Cop: Martuni, can you hear me?
Martuni: I can hear you.
Cop: Call Tompates (that�s my neighbor�s nickname) and tell him that Ara�s Mercedes is broken down 3 kilometers from the Bertashen crossroad in the direction of Aghdam and needs a be towed.
Martuni: Will do.

I thanked the cops and they continued on.

A couple of people stopped to see if they could help and told me that they would drive to my neighbor�s house just in case the police could not get in touch with them and let him know I am waiting for him.

In about a half-hour, Vitalic showed up with tow strap. It took us about an hour to tow the car, which we took to the body shop where in the morning, they will fix the oil-pan and also make a skid-plate, so next time the oil-pan will have a fighting change against the occasional pothole I encounter.

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