Yesterday morning I got up at 6:30 am to get ready to leave for Arizona (to go to Jaimie's wedding). I picked up Marci and Jenna and we were on the road by 7:30. A little bit into the trip (hour and a half? two hours?) I started seeing white smoke coming from the back of my car so I texted my mom to see how big of an issue it was. She said it was probably just because I had gotten my oil changed days before (wrong answer). Awhile later (two and a half hours into the trip) the smoke increased and we stopped accelerating - in the middle of nowhere, Utah. I freaked out a little, but pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I was leaking a lot of some sort of fluid so I checked the oil. There was plenty. So, I pulled out my phone to call my mom - no service. The other girls woke up and we started doing a service hunt. As soon as we stepped away from the car, we heard the pleasant sound of coyotes. Awesome. Several people stopped and we waved them on. Finally we got enough service so that I could call my mom, my mechanic uncle (in Virginia) and we got ahold of AAA.
Meanwhile, a lovely old couple stopped. They had been planning to leave early for the temple that morning, but ended up not going. The lady said we looked just like good Mormon girls (which we are) so she had to help us. We were at that time fighting with AAA because Marci's parents were the cardholders, not her, so they didn't want to give us a free tow. The couple (the Collettes) gave us their AAA card and promised to double check that we were getting a tow truck once they were in a better service area (because service was so spotty and we weren't sure the call had gone all the way through). Once they left, a few more people stopped (including pretty much Marci's whole family) and we waited. We finally decided someone needed to get to an area with better service so we could check on the tow truck. The plan was not to go with a man, and to send two people. Luckily, this lady and her sister and their vehicle full of kids stopped, refused to leave only one of us there alone, and drove Jenna to a service area. On the way, they spotted the tow truck and came back. That's when Rick came along.
Rick was the tow truck driver and mechanic. He said that he had towed many vehicles like mine that summer and they all ended up in the junkyard because they needed a new transmission and that's too expensive. Not to mention that I was leaking transmission fluid. This is what I drive (a picture from the internet, not my actual one).
Mine is the same except it's all blue, no white. I figured my car was dead for always and started freaking out minorly. I got calls in to my parents to let them know we were no longer stranded on the side of the road. We were taken to Beaver, Utah to Rick's shop to wait. We sat in the DQ attached to the gas station attached to the shop and waited. And we waited and waited. And I freaked out a lot, and we waited. We started trying to figure out plans for what we would do. The general consensus involved staying in Beaver for the night and getting a ride to Arizona the next day with a friend of Marci's (though we didn't know how to get back to Provo afterwards). Finally we heard from Rick. My car would run, but it will never go fast again and likely not long distances. We took it back to Provo.
The plan then became to get Jenna's car (which would involve getting her oil changed, checking tire pressure, unloading her stuff because she's moving, and transferring all of our travel neccesities) and then drive to Arizona either through the night or stopping at Marci's grandparents on the way. To our surprise and delight, Jenna's boyfriend had done all the things to get the car ready before we even got there and she just had to get gas. Twelve hours after we had originally left, with no net gain, we were on the road again.
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. We drove it in three shifts, no one got pulled over, Jenna saw a couple deer, there was construction, and Marci got stuck in the rain. Finally, we got to Marci's house, I showered, and I went to sleep. The day was certainly exhausted, but we made it. We got here and we're ready(ish) for the wedding and we owe a lot of people for their time and kindness.
This is a Beaver. I just found out they do have beavers in Utah. Go figure.
