This weekend was my first trip out to Four Quarters Farm located just over the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, with two of my girlfriends. This was also, incidentally, my first road trip in which I was doing the driving. My confession, since I have only had my driver's license for a short time now, I've never driven the truck long distance and the longest I've driven anywhere in the car is an hour and a half. If Mark and I go anywhere together, he's the one doing the driving, he is a driver and hates being a passenger with anyone. This drive was a really big deal for me. Here follows a tale of adventure, of light and love and leaking power steering fluid: Most of the drive in was uneventful highway driving, filled with music, laughing and conversation. We stopped to grab a bite to eat 2.5 hours into our three hour drive. I remarked, as we turned into the parking lot, about a weird sound the power steering pump was making, "Mark's mom had the truck for a few months and had just had the power steering pump replaced." (Or so I thought. ) We parked, had our Sheetz wraps and were ready to head out. Only, as I tried to back out, there was no power steering. Investigating under the truck, there was a significant puddle of fluid and a steady dripping right behind the driver's side front tire. A few phone calls later to Mark and AAA and a chat with locals, we found ourselves at a gas station with a garage, that had closed about an hour earlier for the day, it was six o'clock. The gas station attendant was as helpful as he could be. But really, Robyn, who is officially a rock star in my book, was on the ground under the truck getting covered in grease on the phone with her dad, who is a mechanic, talking her through what to do and detailing our options. Use automatic transmission fluid, a fluid that can be used in place of power steering fluid and is significantly cheaper and try to duct tape the leak. As far as we could tell, the leak was from the reservoir itself and was too greasy for the duct tape to stick to it. We decided on a strategy, we were not turning around, we bought all the automatic transmission fluid the gas station had. We would make our way to camp, stopping to check where the fluid levels were at a gas station before we separated ourselves from civilization. The leak was so bad, that in a 25 minute ride, I was losing steering and something was starting to smoke under the hood. We refilled the reservoir, which was nearly completely empty, made it to camp, and decided to try to duct tape again in the morning after the reservoir was empty and not dripping. When we arrived after dark to the camp site, we found the tent partially collapsed and filled with water. We set up a smaller tent in a friends camp around their fire and enjoyed wine, conversation and s'mores in the cold night air. We adjourned to another group of friends camp who had built a yurt, it was level and heated, but had a rodent infestation and was moldy. But it was wonderful that they shared their space with us and offered crash space for a warm place to sleep, "we have the option of sleeping here?" and a resounding, "hell yeah!" followed. In the morning Robyn and Andrea took me on a walking tour of the Farm. I hadn't realized what a tent city the place was. Sprinkled throughout the woods were the alters, personal and public, alter for Athena, alter for Ganesh, we passed the site of the Native American groups sweat lodge, the Stone Circle, the Coffee Dragon. I'm glad to have had a chance to see this place that has come to mean so much to them. After breaking down the camp site and packing up the truck, we found the duct taping just wasn't going to work. The steering takes a minute or two of driving before the power steering kicks in, for the pump to fill the lines with fluid, so the first bit of exiting from the camp site involved some of the most insane driving conditions ever. I'm passing through trees with only inches to spare on either side of my mirrors with no power steering. I'm pulling with both hands to get the wheel to turn. I'm proud of myself for this feat and was thinking how proud Mark would be of my handling this driving situation. We had weighed our options, would we have the truck towed somewhere, we could stay another day but we couldn't find a mechanic open on Sunday