Our Grand Adventure Chapter 2- The tire saga

It had been a day... quite a long day. We had been trying to get to Idaho Falls (IF) but as I told Charles later that night, sometimes you make a day and sometimes it makes you. FAFSA for example. We found out that we had to turn in a bunch of papers on campus. Then we decided to buy books but the bookstore was full so when we got out we were already late to buy chairs from this lady. Once we had taken the chairs home we learned that my brother was coming in and didn't have anywhere to go. He said that he was fine just skating around Rexburg. However I didn't think that would be fun to do till ten o clock at night so I invited him to come with us. His ride to Rexburg decided that since we were going to IF that we would all meet at the Walmart. (as a side note, there are two walmarts in IF) We were about to leave to go get him when, I checked my e-mail. I had e-mailed someone about a desk earlier, they had replied with a picture. We decided to buy it. So off we went to pick it up. On the way we swung by and picked up my friend Kori. (She needed some stuff in IF as well) By the time we got the desk back to the apartment and left for IF we were a few hours later than planned. About half way to IF I noticed that the steering wheel was not letting me go straight. The car kept swerving. I could stay in my lane but something was definitely wrong. The car helped me out by letting out a "pop" and swerving even more. At this point it was pretty obvious that we had blown a tire. Being the amazing driver I am I quickly pulled us safely off the freeway. At this point I was feeling a bit...(bad that I had told my friend that we would be in If a while ago, bad that Jacob was probably stranded at some random Wallmart with nothing to do, frustrated that everything seemed to be getting in the way of going to IF, worried that we blew a tire and wondering what kind of damage we had done to the car, and tired from carrying loads and loads of stuff up and down tree flights of stairs multiple times) well, I was feeling a lot of things. Charles Kori and I went out to see the damage, this is what we saw...



We must have looked dazed because Kori spoke first pulling us onto action. She asked Charles where the spare was. I went and found the instruction manual and Charles began getting the tire out. A very nice guy stopped by to see if he could help but between the three of us we had it under control. Charles and I carried an ant infested rock (mini boulder) from the field over to support the opposite wheel in the car. Then Charles removed the tire. He also had me help keep the car from tipping by sitting in the driver's seat. (I was all to happy to oblige it was freezing and it looked like rain) How nice of him to do the dirty work and let me get warm :) Here's Charles trying to figure out where to put the jack on the car.



The switch





Kori! I am so glad she came along, her help was greatly appreciated!



Me "securing the car"



As soon as we finished and got back into the car it started to rain. That was close! I called Jacob to let him know we were back on the road. He told us kind of where he was (none of us really knew anything about IF, I can find the temple and that's about it.) At this point you have probably guessed, we got lost. For about an hour. we found one of the walmarts (remember how I mentioned there were two, yeah now we now where they both are. on opposite sides of IF) We found Jacob perched on one of the shopping cart stands. I wish I had a picture cause he looked pretty funny. He loves to do random stuff like that. So it was about 7:30pm and we still hadn't done any shopping. We were starving so we went to McDonald's (yuck) To make the shopping story short we went to Target and Walmart. We figured it would be a good idea to go back home the way we came so as not to get lost. Before we left Jacob offered a prayer that we would find our way home and get there safely. as we made our way down Yellowstone we saw the flashing lights. The entire street was blocked off, we couldn't see what had happened though. We tried to go down a side street but the whole area was blocked off cover a few blocks. We figured it must have been a train accident, what else could block off such a huge section of the city? By shear chance I saw a small sign pointing us to the 20. We arrived safely home in Rexburg around 11:30. (Still in time for Kori to get in before curfew thankfully!) Crashing into bed I realized that I had it all wrong. Things may not have been how I had planned but We were still being blessed. We now had furniture and had been able to get really good deals on it. We had safely gone to and from IF despite the trouble with the tire and getting lost. The spare tire was full size so instead of having to get a tire right away we could keep going, the rain held off till we were done so we were not soaking wet while lost and shopping in IF. We had found Jacob and then by being so late with shopping maybe avoided getting in the huge accident in Yellowstone. So even though I was exhausted and knew I had to wake up in five hours I went to bed happy and grateful.


Like I said, sometimes you make the the day and sometimes it makes you...