I’ve been hired to play my saxophone at a wedding in Mazatlán, Mexico, and I decide to drive rather than fly there from my home in Boulder, Colorado. I buy a secondhand Volkswagen van from a smooth-talking salesman: a 1981 model with a fuel-injected engine, sparkling chrome, and an azure paint job — perfect for a trip through the Southwest. But as I tool around town in it, I discover it’s a lemon. My glove compartment becomes stuffed with repair bills for new fuel injectors, ball joints, steering-column assembly, clutch, brake shoes, and so on. I dub the malevolent machine “Helga the Hideous,” and, before leaving for Mexico, I have my friend Aisha, a Buddhist nun, perform a ceremony in which she chants Tibetan prayers and smudges Helga with sage. It works, and I drive trouble-free across the desert and along the steep, winding roads of the Sonoran mountains, arriving in Mazatlán with a sigh of relief.