I'm never driving again

My Very Broken Down Car :(

I seem to have nothing but bad luck when I combine cars, long trips, and oh yeah...me.

Take, for instance, yesterday's little incident. I left my house at 8am to go to Huntsville for church. Huntsville is well on the way to DFW, and I had made a joke about just keeping on going north...boy am I glad I didn't! I left at about 1pm to go home, and 20 minutes into my trip...

...something on the passenger side started squealing, and at first I thought it was something weird with my music. However, it continued once I turned off the music, eliminating that possibility. It got really loud, but instead of completely freaking out (the default Adriane option) I calmly switched lanes & maneuvered to the shoulder. This took a total of about 7 seconds. By that time, I smelled smoke, and by the time I got the car turned off a couple of seconds later (yes, I was in super-high-speed-fix-it-mode) I could see the smoke billowing from under the hood. This is what we call not a good thing.

So in tears I called Dad, who said he was on his way. So he ended up skipping church. It was about 96* in the shade (where I moved after about 30 minutes), and Dad got there a little over an hour after the initial problem. It turns out my AC belt broke. Dad is changing that and the Something Else belt today, and I should be good as new. We called AAA and a tow truck brought it back to my house.

But! I being the fantastic photo weirdo that I am, just had to get a picture of the ordeal...for future humor's sake. So I climbed over the guard rail (yes, in my skirt & church shoes...I'm Wonder Woman ya know) and waded around in the bug-infested grass. It was just grasshoppers, I told myself, and though I don't like grasshoppers, this must be part of the breaking-down experience. When I came back to Dad & the tow truck man, Dad asked if I had gotten into fire ants. Of course I said no...THAT's when they started biting. My feet were covered in the things. And they bit me. A lot. Not nice.

As crappy as the day became, and the fact that it took me 4 hours to get home when it should have taken just 1, it could have been so much worse. Dad says these are things that just happen every once in a while, and that I couldn't really have done anything to prevent it. Basically, this would have happened at this approximate time regardless of what I was doing.

BUT! I wasn't on my way to Dallas/Ft Worth as I'd originally planned. If I were, I'd have been in Centerville then, and my rescue would have been longer coming. And I'd have had to turn around.

AND! It didn't happen the night before, when Juliane & I were on our way back from Teen Bible Study in the dark. That would have been closer to home, but more dangerous. I don't really need to drag my sister into a stranded situation.

PLUS! There are lots of places along I-45 whose shoulder width is about zero. I happened to break down in a place where the shoulder was the width of an entire lane, and there was grass next to it.

So given the fact that this was going to happen, I think a lot of things "just happened" to work out well. In other words, I was protected even though I wasn't necessarily happy about the situation. It's funny how little things can give you just a little more faith when you least expect it.