.....and AAA

These posts really go together because, as a result of our geocaching adventure, we also got to have a AAA adventure. After lunch we set about finding "#7" on our GPS thingamajig. It took us out of town and down a gravel road that said, "no outlet" and then "primitive road". Well, after our drive to Young, we were ready for any rough road! We were excitedly going along - Scooter was driving carefully and slowly - windows open enjoying the cool weather and the smell of the pine trees in teh mountains. I was excitedly watching the distance to the cache decrease....5 miles...4 miles...3 miles....2.5 miles...and then I heard it: "schweet, schweet, schweet." It sounded like a branch was caught in the tire so I told Scott to stop. I got out and looked at the tire on the passenger side....couldn't see anything but could hear a hiss. I first thought, "Hmm.....tire?" Then thought, "No, can't be. Must just the engine hissing about something or other." Then Carolyn was beside me and for some reason we put our hands near the tire and could feel the air coming out....oh boy. First words out of Scott's mouth - with phone in hand -were, "I have a signal. I'm calling AAA." There is a reason we pay for that membership every year and we are so thankful we have it! While he did that Carolyn, Elyse and I entertained ourselves by taking turns holding a finger over the hole in the tire. We are so easily amused.

So I backed up the car into the shade and managed to get it so the hole was on the ground and the tire kept some air....Scott contacted AAA and they said they'd be there in about an hour. Not bad! Thankfully we had water from our picnic, it wasn't hot, we were in the shade and we were able to pleasantly entertain ourselves: I promptly pulled on my hiking boots and set off for a walk! Elyse lasted only a short time: she got tired and was not properly sunscreened; Carolyn lasted a bit longer and we had a nice walk through the forest - scaring the grazing cattle along the way. Better to scare a cow than be scared by a bear!

We got back to the car and Elyse was busy digging in the dirt and after many calls back and forth between Scott and our AAA guy, Red arrived to change our tire. Now, I'm sure some of you are saying, "For heavens' sake! Can't you change a tire?!" I'm sure we could have figured it out if we had to...however, when Red showed up, we realized that our car is not properly equipped with a few special things we needed: like a decent jack and a wrench to get the lug nuts (is that what they're called?!) off...we did, thankfully, find the thing that he needed to get the rims unlocked! Anyway, we came home and thanked God for our many blessings today: technology, AAA, and the people who make them possible.

side note: we did not find the final geocache to which we were headed. We returned our GPS thingamajig and called it a day....and began researching new tires for our car.