Today...My Name is Ray

I take complete credit or blame in what happened this morning.  I was feeling excited about this trip.  My husband and I were packing the last minute things into our trailer.  I even made the comment to him, "You know we're doing so well right now that if we really had to, and the car broke down on the trip, we could get a new one."

We headed out of town down the freeway.  I didn't like the sound the engine was making.  I kept thinking, "Oh, no.  We over packed the trailer."  The sounds kept making me uneasy.  We hit the 100 mile mark away from home and my nerves started to calm some.

I thought about all the times when I was growing up we had some serious car problems (and my father was a mechanic.)  There were times the cars overheated.  There was one time the car had smoke coming up from under the hood.  And the day my mother wanted to take a small day trip out of town and we broke down five miles from home and we were stuck all day at a gas station.  I was starting to feel good about how well our little Ford Explorer has treated us over the last 9 years.  And then....

We were driving through the small town of Beatty, NV and the car smelled hot...and there smoke coming from the tail pipe.  It was only 8 in the morning, it didn't even dawn on me that some businesses weren't open yet.  The nice lady at the gas station we had pulled into gave us the numbers of the TWO mechanics in town.  We talked to a local fireman and found out one of the mechanics was on vacation.  A kind man named John, (Thank You!) drove down to the gas station to take a look at the SUV.  We offered to pay him for his effort and he declined.  I felt better when he said we could make it home, but that was about it.  That was fine with me!  There was a whole lot of nothin' between Beatty and Las Vegas, and our car has no air conditioning.   I've never prayed so much about a car before.

The good news is we made it home by noon.  We might attempt camping in the back yard tonight and definitely BBQ the meat we had packed.  My husband is more optimistic than I am right now that we might get to attempt this trip again soon.  Maybe I'll feel better once I get a good nights sleep.