Tired of tires

I can't believe I used to think these were stupid!!!!

-Stephen on electric blankets

This trip has not been my first encounter with a flat tire in the dark in the middle of nowhere.  There was a time a couple years ago, 2 hours from SC and 2 hours from Raleigh, on a highway without street lights, at midnight, and my tire blew.  I think I could have changed it, but I didn't have any source of light that would allow me to even see which tire was flat.  I felt my way around each tire, and frantically waited through the music for AAA to pick up the phone.  Before they did, an officer pulled up, and changed my tire for me.  I held the flashlight.  He was black, and had braces.  He was really grumpy but I can't think of what I would have done without him that night.  My dad gave me a flashlight to keep in my car so this wouldn't happen again.

Unfortunately, you never "get used" to blowing tires in the dark in the middle of nowhere.  It's always unexpected, unpleasant, and inconvenient.  And for me, on long car rides.  So I was less than happy when it blew 55 miles into my 130 mile trip to see Stephen for one night before each of us move to different states this week.  Do you know what is 55 miles outside of Las Vegas?  Desert.  That's. It.

I called Stephen and he tried to calm me down - he later told me the story of how in Elko, NV it is so cold they leave their trucks running all day in the parking lot so it's not cold when they get into them.  My husband, the Environmentalist.  That's unrelated to the story, but folks, please don't do that.

So, I scrambled for the flashlight. But it wasn't in the console.  What had I done with it??  Shoot I took it to work.  I could visualize it in my safety vest pocket.  Stupid Emma.

I had a dying phone with a flashlight app.  It would work.  I found the car jack, and even though my car was already leaning down the shoulder (it was slanted), I still jacked up the higher side of my car successfully.  Then my phone went dead.

I have a car charger, but it would take a while for the phone to charge enough to use the flashlight.  I decided to search through the console again.  While I was outside, God had put it back in there.  Praise Him.  I have absolutely no other explanation.

Now folks, I've actually been going to the gym this year, but I haven't really worked my arms in... well ever.  I'm lucky to lift my carry-on luggage all the way up in the overhead compartments.  So loosening lug nuts was a challenge.  I began standing on the thing you use to loosen them (lug wrench? whatever) and nothing happened!  Then I began bouncing up and down, trying to loosen those stupid lug nuts... not really thinking that if I fell backwards, I would have been roadkill (speed limit was 75mph!).  But I actually got them all off!

And then, after I did the hard part, people pulled up and helped me. Very sweet.  Even gave me their phone number in case I had any more trouble.

Do you know how long you can drive on a donut?  I don't, but I had already gone 60 miles...  I didn't want to make the whole trip home on them too!  And, I have stupid weird size sports tires.  I went through the same thing with my last car. YOU HAVE TO ORDER THEM, NOWHERE STOCKS THEM.  There were 3 places open on Sunday in St. George - the first 2 were no dice.  And the 3rd happened to have TWO in stock.  It's like God is following me around with a big sack like Santa, just constantly handing me gifts.

Just another example of how God takes care of us.  In Stephen's words, "I can't wait to spend many more years of these situations with you!" ... I'm choosing to take that in the sweet "I want to help you" way and not the "I want to laugh at all these situations that happen to you!" kind of way.  Because there was a lot of laughing going on!  :)