Kindness of others...

First, this image is me playing around with sparkle filters...I thought it was perfect for all the glittering snow behind me.

Well, this image is a lot happier than I was yesterday, I can tell you that. After a beautiful couple of days skiing, I started the journey back to Las Vegas. The clouds had cleared and the mountains were just gorgeous. I was going pretty slow down the mountain because I was behind a snow plow for a long ways. I came around a bend in the road and felt something hit the car. As soon as it happened, my tire gauge warning lights came on and I could feel the car pull. I stopped and pulled off as much as I could since I was surrounded by snow on either side.

I got out of the car and went around to look at the right front tire. I can still feel that sick feeling in my stomach. It was completely flat. I like to think that I'm usually pretty prepared for emergency, but this was a bad situation. When you live in the city, we take a lot of things for granted, but I was ten miles up a canyon road with no cell service and when I went to get the spare, there was none. I don't know why I had never bothered to look, but since my car is a hybrid, batteries take the place of the spare tire. I felt complete despair come over me. Even though I had all kinds of emergency aids in the car, nothing was going to fix this tire. A rock or something had cut a hole in the side of the tire. NOW WHAT?

On top of my predicament, the road was pretty remote with almost no traffic. I waited for a bit and then I saw a service truck coming down the mountain. I waved and as luck would have it, a really nice man stopped for me. I told him my situation and with no cell service, he offered to give me a ride into town. He cleared his gear off the passenger seat and we headed to town. We got to a service station and he was nice enough to wait until I was able to reach a tow truck. Whew... first half was over.

I didn't wait more than twenty minutes when this wonderful older gentleman in a tow truck picked me up. We headed up the mountain and started to tell me how very lucky I was. He related all kinds of really sad and terrible stories of the accidents he's been called to on the mountain road. He wasn't making this girl feel a whole lot better, but maybe he could sense it and changed the subject to stories of all the animals that live in those parts and how his family had been there for over two hundred years. We finally came to the car, but had to go a ways past to find a way to turn around. It all really started to sink in how very lucky I'd been, despite things.

We got to town and he pulled into his service station. He couldn't match my tire, but was able to get something close so I could get back home. Talk about grateful. Everything felt like time had stopped, but in actuality, it was only a couple of hours. Every muscle in my body was stiff from anxiety and it took several miles on the road before I could relax a bit as I headed home. 

I got lots of lessons on this trip, but I could not believe how lucky I was to meet two wonderful strangers who treated me like family and went out of their way to help. I'll be forever thankful! ❤️