TIRE-D

Warning Hanna: This post is a book!

It's offical. We are finally residing in Alton, Utah.

This past wed we left Hurricane around noon. Kory was driving his truck pulling the trailor and I was driving the van packed to the rim. We arrived and were unloaded by 4pm. Kory had to work that night but it was so nice having him around for a few hours. Instead of having to leave by 3 to get to work on time he left about 4:50. It was great. That night however when he got to work he discovered one of the tires on the truck was flat. After gathering the tools he needed he fixed it. A couple hours later he went out to the truck to grab something and discovered a different tire was now flat. He was able to fix that tire temporarily before coming home. When he climbed into bed that morning at 3 am he said, "that was the best drive ever." I am so glad he doesn't have a 2 hour commute each day anymore.

Thursday I spent the day putting my kitchen together. Unfortunately the house wasn't clean ans so I had to vaccummn out coupboards and drawers before filling them up with our stuff. When I got up to fix breakfast that morning I discovered that my oven wouldn't heat up above 180 degrees. Being Kory was asleep I figured he'd be able to figure out the problem. After a cold cereal breakfast I tried taking a shower but had no hot water. The water up here isn't even luke warm it's just plain freezing coming out of the taps. When Kory got up he quickly summed up the problem. The propane tank was empty! Kory then spent several minutes on the phone trying to contact the correct propane comany. Lucky for us the propane company had a driver in the area and would be able to fill us up later in the afternoon. Kory spent the afternoon taking notes on what needed to be fixed around the house. There are many broken, not working repairs that are needed. Being I was working in St. George the next day he compiled a list of materials and tools he needed me to pick up for him. Being he didn't get a chance to fix his trucks tire he took the van to work that night. When he got home at 4 the next morning he told me I would never believe what happened. The van had a flat on his way to work. That's 3 flats now in less then 12 hours. He changed the tire with the spare donut we had but I would need to take the tire into Discount Tire that morning to have the tire fixed. An hour later I was on my way into town.

Friday morning I prayed during the 1 1/2 drive that my little donut would make the long trip. I went by my parents house to pick up a tire for our little car that had a nail in it that also needed to be fixed at Discount Tire. When I got to my parents house I discovered the donut I had been driving on was flat! Thankfully my dad was around. He filled it up for me, helped me load the little cars tire and then off I went into town. I had my mom follow me just in case I had another mishap with a tire. We love discount tires. They have a life time warranty on there tires. So both tires were fixed for free. They even put the donut back in it's place for me for next time. After work that day I drove back out to Hurricane. Our plan was to finish loading the van with the odds and ends that we had left behind. My parents were also going to follow me up to Alton, My mom was going to drive our little car, my dad his truck pulling our 2 pigs that our scheduled to be slottered this coming week. So the van's loaded, the car is loaded we get the pigs loaded and off we go. We can't drive through Zion (our normal route) becuase they charge $25 to drive through plus they charge an extra $25 for an escort through the tunnels if your pulling a trailor. My dad didn't want to go over Cedar Mtn. becuase it's almost all up hill and his truck doesn't have a lot of juice. So in the end we decide to go over the Cane Beds. The cane beds is our shortest option then going through Fredonia and Kanab and then back around. However despite being a National Park the roads are TERRIBLE. It's about 25 miles of which only 4 (but seems like 20) is a dirt road that is lucky to get graded every couple of years. The asphalt after the dirt road isn't much better as there are too many large pot holes to count. At the last minute my dad decides to go the longer route becuase of the pigs. He was worried about the bumpy road and all the dust. He didn't want the pigs to suffocate on all the dust we'd surely encounter. My mom and I went ahead and took the cane bed road. After my mom and I have finally gotten off that horendous dirt road my mom signals to pull over. We both pull over to the shoulder. She was hearing a noise that's not normal and wanted to make sure she wasn't loosing the bumper or maybe even a tire after that dirt road. We get out walk around the car and can't find anything a miss. So we both get back in our cars and TRY pulling away. I can't! I pulled off onto the shoulder too much. My van has sunk into the soft sandy shoulder. Well crap! My mom's phone has no service and my borrowed cell phone is dead! My mom gets behind the van and try's to push while I accelerate. NOTHING! So I put the van in neutral and both of us try to push, NOTHING! I then find a long dead branch and am lying on the ground trying to dig the sand out from underneath the van. Just then a truck drives by and pulls over. An older man probably pushing 80 gets out with another older man who's both arms are crippled. They come walking up asking if they could help. I wanted to laugh. Looking at them I didn't know how they could possibly be of help. Well help they did. They had a chain they were able to put under the van and helped drag me back onto the road. They were great. We talked on the side of road. Found out they were from Valley (part of our new home) and we knew some of the same people. After a while my mom gets in the car and I in the van and off we go following our good samaritans. Seriously not 5 minutes later I look in my rear view mirror and see smoke coming out from behind the car my mom's driving. She immediately pulls over. I take my time turning around so as not to get to close to the edge. I was NOT going to get stuck again. I get back to my mom to discover we've had a blow out. SERIOUSLY! In a 48 hour period with three different cars we've had major issues with 5 tires now. My mom and I are just standing there. I mean come on what are the odds? We hear a truck coming and look up to see our good samaritans coming back again. They get out and come towards us asking , "now what"? AAAAAAAHHHHH! Obviously the tire is a gonner. They ask if we've got a spare. Uh huh we do! Only it's in the back of the truck that my dad is driving and he chose to take what was suppose to be the long way. There are no other options. We'll just have to come back for the car later. So we pile crap from the van into the car to make room for my mom. 45 mintues later we finally get to Alton to discover my dad already there, so much for the short cut. We decide that before we unload all of our stuff we had better go unload the pigs. We drive down the street to my borther-in laws house. He tells us where to put them. We open the back of the truck, we start to unload the closest pig which was the biggest. When he's crawling out of the back we notice the other pig isn't moving. Uh oh! Can this day get any better? Nope that 2nd dang pig died during our 2 hour trip! What was it thinking? We called the butcher and asked what we should do? I won't go into details. I don't think I'm quite ready for the farming life. Lets just say in the next hour we drove that dead pig to the butchers and it was decided we may not get alot of pork chops or rump roasts out of it but we will be getting a lot of cured sausage. After my dad I leave the butcher's we head out to fix the car's tire. We've borrowed a jack and the necesary tools, we've got the tire and hope it won't take more then just 15 minutes. We get to car just fine. My dad starts trying to jack the car up to find very quickly we've parked ourselves in an ant hill. We brush ourselves off and drive the car up as much as we dare away from those blasted ants. The jack we borrowed is just to big for the car. We can't get the car high enough to put the jack underneath it. Knowing Kory's had a flat before we decide to empty the trunk of our belongings to see if we can find a different jack. HIP HIP HOORAY! We've got a much smaller jack to work with. Along with the jack we find a spare tire. If I would have known about the spare we could have changed the tire right after it blew out. Oh well, 15 minutes later we're both back on the road. Hallelujiah we both make it back to Alton. By the time we got home it was after 10pm. My parents immediately leave for home since it was so late and they've still got a 2 hour drive ahead of them. I asked them to be VERY VERY careful. The fates were truely against us this day. The last thing we needed was for them to hit a dang deer on the way home. I'm glad to say they made it safely with no other mishaps for the day.

The best part of the day was that after my parents had left and I had crawled into bed my husband came home. He took a 20 minute break after hearing what had happend during the afternoon and into the night to come home and check on me. I felt loved. It was a day that started way too early and ended way to late. I was just very thankful that we had survived the day. I'm hoping next weeks trip to St. George for work won't be quite so event full. Now seriously, thanks Mom, Dad and Hanna for your help that awful day!