Tire miracle

Its been over a month since I have posted and I still have a lot of catching up to do but before I forget about another miracle in our lives I have to write about it.

A few weeks ago Troy and I were talking about what we should do with our tax return. We have a lot we could do with it (replace our carpet with hardwood floor, savings, actual dressers for the whole family, a storage shed for our back yard, etc) but we decided to do something we have been itching to do for a long time. We decided to go to Disneyland with our 2 older kids. I don't expect a lot of people to understand why we made this choice and its kind of hard to explain but we knew we needed to do it. Our 2 older children have been such troopers since Zane was born. Most of the time they are pushed aside, told to be quiet, told to play by themselves, etc. We haven't had much one on one time with them and after Troys accident and my surgery they were really pushed aside. So much so that we decided to put Hinckley back in counseling for a while it was a very good thing for him.

Anyway, we booked the hotel, received the tickets, packed the car and headed to Las Vegas to drop off the little ones. Look for a post soon on how we did Disneyland on an extreme budget! We had a limited window to go because of schedule conflicts so we decided to drive through the night on Thursday March 6th plus our kids would sleep most of the way!

Troy was burning the candle both ends trying to tie up loose ends with work and school before we left. (works spring break and UNM's spring break was different then Hinckleys spring break) He took the first shift of driving until about midnight. He left our house about 7:30pm and it is a 9 hour drive. Most of the kids were asleep by the time we hit Interstate 40 about 30 minutes from our home. A little after mid-night we pulled over and switched drivers. I had taken a 5 hour energy ( I am not a big fan of these kind of things but I didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel either) and actually I was surprised at how great I felt. Before we left I kind of had a feeling something was going to happen on our drive but dismissed it. I even mentioned to Troy about bringing our gun which we normally do on road trips but because our concealed weapons license had expired and the last time I was pulled over the police officer asked if we had a gun in the car it took an extra hour just for him to check it out and make sure it wasn't stolen we decided not to take the gun.

Interstate 40 is littered with semi-trucks and at night it is much worse. I had this overwhelming feeling that I should be aware of my surroundings from the minute I got in the drivers seat. I kept seeing signs to watch out for deer and so I really felt like we would come across a deer. I kept replaying in my head if a deer was straight in front of me what I would do or if it was running from the right or left etc. I was feeling confident as we drove on that I would be aware if danger was eminent and I would have the sense about me to know what to do.  I was in the left hand lane with a semi-truck on my right and one behind us. I noticed my low tire light went on and in my head I thought oh maybe it is because we changed altitudes and temperatures so fast. And within a matter of seconds I knew there was something wrong with the tire. I quickly turned my turn signal on to get over in the shoulder and slowly made my way off the road.

*SIDE NOTE HERE* When I was in college I took a road trip with my roomie LaNelle to General Conference in the spring of 2005 and we had a flat tire on the freeway. That experience alone helped me with this experience 9 years later!

As it was happening I recognized the smells, sounds, and things from my road trip with LaNelle. I felt so blessed to have recognized danger when it was happening and to get my family to safety. Troy was dead asleep but woke up in a panic as he heard the thud of our van limp to shoulder of the road. Our kids were all sound asleep but slowly awoke as we checked the van for damage. It was clear that our driver side rear tire was completely gone. It looked like somebody had sliced it vertical. We started to get out our jack and other items to change out the tire. We soon realized we didn't have the lug nut tool. We couldn't even lower the spare tire because you use that tool to get the tire out. I was disappointed and frustrated that we didn't have that tool and we piled back in the van. We pulled out our phones to call USAA (our car insurance) and we were connected quickly with an agent. She asked if we were safe and we told her we were off the road completely but we weren't sure where we were located. I couldn't even remember the last town we had been through. I knew we were about 80 miles outside Kingman, Arizona. She called a towing truck company for us and told us it would be 2-3 hours before anybody could reach us because we were in the middle of nowhere. So we sat patiently waiting in the van. Hinckley was the only one who freaked out about the noise of the semi-trucks (which is ironic because it is Chandler who DOES NOT like loud noises). We put a movie on for him with his head phones and he calmed down. I felt confident that we would be okay because we had just gassed up about 40 miles prior and we had a ton of food/water in the car. I was very glad that 90% of the trucks and cars that passed us got in the left lane so the noise and wind wasn't so bad. Nobody stopped to see if we were okay which I was very thankful for. It was 1am in the morning and I kept praying that if somebody stopped they would do no harm to me or my family.

The time passed very quickly and before I knew it the tow truck lights we right behind us. I was nervous about what kind of tow truck guy would be coming our way. My sisters had a very interesting experience a few years ago with a tow truck guy. But to my surprise he was an old grandpa who was kind and gentle. He had our old tire off within seconds and our spare tire on within minutes. He checked the tire pressure and realized our spare tire was low. I was so thankful he had checked and it made me realize I was thankful we didn't have the lug nut tool because we would have put the spare on and started driving only to be stopped again.

We drove extra slow into Kingman and arrived about 5am. We called a few places in town that said they were 24 hour tire shops but we soon realized they were either semi-truck stops or not in business anymore. So we pulled into the Wal-mart lube and had a 2 hour wait until they opened. I thought all Wal-marts were 24 hours now but I was wrong. The kids all waited patiently in the van for 2 more hours until we could go into Wal-mart. We ate breakfast there and I let each of the kids pick out a new toy. They were such troopers the whole time and did not whine once! I was so proud of them. I feel so blessed that we were protected. We were watched over. The outcome could have been so much worse but we were blessed.