Problems like the price of gas and carbon footprints paled when the water pump on my 17-year-old -- and 45,000-mile-young -- work truck conked out.

My sharp, shade-tree-mechanic's ear had picked up on that telltale sound resembling a bowling ball in a washing machine, so I pulled over. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere (a Wal-Mart parking lot in a rural county) on my way to a distant stone yard. As there was no amount of bubble gum and baling wire to secure the pump and get me home, it was a good day gone real bad.

So I called my roadside assistance service, and in short order the woman at the call center in Michigan was laughing. I asked her what was funny.

She apologized and said she laughed because I had said I was from Durham and her great-great-great-grandfather was Dr. Bartlett Durham. He who had donated the land for the 19th century train station that bore his name, which grew into one of the best cities in America to be a single person starting a business, raising a family and retiring in if you wanted to sit in a nationally ranked restaurant where you could eavesdrop on the nation's highest per capita population of tattooed, creative-class, beer connoisseurs.

We had a nice chat and within 20 minutes of my call, a couple of friendly guys -- Sammy and Darius -- from TNT Towing Company arrived from Burlington. They hitched up my truck and carried us both to my preferred garage in Durham. No charge, no sweat, no fuss -- and no AAA.

My wife and I had dropped our American Automobile Association coverage and switched to the Better World Club (BWC). BWC provides roadside assistance like AAA, but unlike AAA, they don't lobby the feds to scar the country with more asphalt or oppose bikeways and transit.

BWC is the nation's only environmentally friendly auto club with perks like discounts on hybrid cars, eco-travel services, insurance, free maps, car maintenance discounts and, my personal favorite, roadside bicycle assistance for those times your bike just can't carry you home. My wife used their travel services recently to score a roundtrip to California and five days of car rental and hotel for under $800.

Even more, BWC donates 1 percent of revenues to environmental cleanups, and they offer what's called a carbon offset. Each time you fly or drive, storms of greenhouse gases -- like carbon dioxide -- spew into the air. BWC was the first travel company in the world to offer a way to offset those carbon emissions by installing energy-efficient furnaces in schools. They figure an $11 donation to these kinds of projects offsets a ton of carbon dioxide -- about the same emissions from either a year of driving or one roundtrip, domestic plane flight. You can donate directly or, if you buy insurance through them, they'll offset your car's first year of emissions free.

BWC was started by a couple of guys whose friendship goes back 40 years to when they first met as Cub Scouts in Ohio. In BWC's e-newsletter, "Kicking Asphalt," you can learn about travel deals, read a primer that explains the makeup of the price of a gallon of gas and check out their offer of free memberships to same-sex couples that have recently married.

I didn't know this when we signed up, but even the hosts of Car Talk, the popular call-in show on National Public Radio, are fans. Here's a quote from co-host Tom Magliozzi on the Web site www.betterworldclub.com: "We're signing up [for Better World Club] immediately. We had no idea that part of our AAA dues were being spent on lobbyists who oppose just about everything having to do with public transportation. If AAA thinks that it's a good idea for every single person to get to work in 3,000 pounds of iron, we sure don't want to help support such a silly idea. Cars stink. Everybody knows that."

So if you join and end up talking to Bartlett Durham's great-great-great-granddaughter at the call center in Michigan, tell her I said "Hey" and that my truck's running just fine now.