Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Good People of Colorado


I originally wrote the following on June 21, 2010, during our vacation to Marble, Colorado. Despite my best intentions, I didn't write anything further about the rest of the vacation. Most of it was spent reading, anyway, so I guess it wouldn't have been that interesting. Although, there was an incident involving an overturned raft that could have been worth writing about. Regardless, enjoy:


Well, it has been quite a trip already. We started on Saturday morning on the shorter leg of our trip. It was only supposed to be a 5.5 hour drive from Loma Linda to St. George, but with a two-year-old aboard, it turned out to be a fair bit longer. Up until our stop in Las Vegas, the trip was rather uneventful. One of the only things of note was that I found out that I could eat Pintos and Cheese at Taco Bell (not many other restaurants can cater to my broken jaw), so it became a staple for the
rest of the trip.


The other thing that was rather amusing was that Anika kept on saying, "Ani go to Colorado." Finally, her mother decided to explain the entire trip to her. She spared no expense. I mean, we're talking about grand hand-gesture diagrams and full itinerary explanation. First, she detailed how we would be driving up to St. George to where we would spend the first night. The highlight of that leg of the trip for Ani was obviously the hotel pool, which she made sure to emphasize. Then, Nicol described the next leg of our trip from St. George, Utah to Colorado, detailing the drive and how Ani would be able to see her cousins and play with them once we reached Colorado.



After this long and comprehensive description of our journey, Ani sat, wide-eyed for a moment and finally responded, "Go home." Jeff, Nicol, and I all thought this was hilarious, and, after that drawn-out account of our itinerary, I think that deep within us, we felt like turning around and going home as well.



Our first real incident of note occurred shortly after driving through Las Vegas. We stopped at a gas station to let Ani go to the bathroom and piled back into the car to continue our trip, but, when Jeff turned the key to start the van, nothing happened. The engine didn't even attempt to turn over. After trying a few things, we finally popped the hood to see if we could figure out what was going on. A couple of guys hopped out of their car to see if they could help. We knew it must be some sort of electrical problem, so we checked the fuses. They all looked fine, but when we swapped the radio fuse and the starter fuse, everything started working again. It must have just been loose. After thanking God for helping us to figure out the
problem, we were on our way again.



After reaching St. George, enjoying the pool, spending the night at the hotel, and eating breakfast, we were ready to set out on the second leg of our journey. This leg was to be significantly longer - about 8.25 hours. Again, this leg was uneventful for the most part, but once we started to reach our destination, something unexpected and quite inconvenient happened.



As we were climbing the last hill up to the summit of the last pass before Marble (our final destination), Ani started complaining about her tummy hurting. Since we knew we were close, we begged her to hold it and continued up the hill. After the third or so time that Ani complained about her tummy hurting, we realized that she must be carsick. Really carsick. She began to drool, and Jeff immediately stopped the van, but, to our dismay, we watched as mostly-chewed, half digested burrito spewed forth from her gaping maw. It flowed down the front of her, rivulets running over her shirt and carseat. After some heroic clean up efforts by Nicol, Jeff decided that we should pull forward to a better turn-off point. As we pulled forward, he noticed that he no longer had power steering, and the car was overheating. We soon discovered that the serpentine belt had fallen off and we had not packed the tools to fix it.



This is the point in which the real heroes of this story make their entrance - the "good samaritans". As soon as we pulled off the road and opened up our hood, the first person stopped by to try and help. After she hung out for a little while and found out what the problem was, we told her that we would be able to figure something out (after all, we were pretty close to our destination and knew that some of our family were there). Unfortunately, what we hadn't counted on is the complete lack of cell phone reception in and around Marble, Colorado. While we were still trying to figure out what we were going to do, another vehicle stopped and out jumped Chuck. A big, friendly-looking gray-haired man wearing a cowboy hat. He walked over to our van, assessed the situation, informed us that he didn't have any tools, and offered us a ride. We soon learned that he had a wife, Glenda, and a son, Jeremy, in the van along with their dog Brodie. At first, they were going to take just Anika and Nicol with them to get help from our family, but when they saw that Jeff and I were somewhat less than comfortable with this situation, Chuck decided that he had to do what he could to make room for me, as well. Before long, he had cleared the other seat in the van so that I could go as well, and we headed off.



We were able to make it to our final destination with little difficulty, no small thanks to Chuck and his helpful family. After a while, Uncle Tom, Ben, and I were able to head back to help Jeff get the van the rest of the way, but by the time we got there, we saw that another "good samaritan" had stopped to help Jeff and had provided him with the tools he needed to put the serpentine belt back on. As soon as we got there, we were able to head back with Jeff in tow.



As I am sure that the reader can see, the real heroes of our story were the many incredibly thoughtful people who stopped to help us when we had trouble. I'm not sure what we would have done in our close-to-helpless situation if it were not for those that found it in their hearts to help a fellow human in a less-than-ideal situation.