The Thanksgiving with the Tire in the Road

We have been planning for months to go to Utah for Thanksgiving to be with Thomas' family this year. Our plan was to leave Friday night right after New Moon and drive straight through. Dumb plan, I know, but we were anxious to leave. After the movie we got the van loaded up and took off. We were cruising up 287 at the normal 70 miles an hour. We were somewhere between Decatur and Bowie when, lying right in the middle of our lane, was a tire. It wasn't just the tire, it was the entire wheel of a car. There was no time to be defensive, we ran right over it. Thomas could tell something was seriously wrong so we pulled off at an abandoned gas station. The tire was actually still under the front of our van, we dragged it off the road under there. Oil was leaking out and the suspension something-or-other looked mangled.

Lucky for us, a few minutes later, the dudes who lost the tire pulled up into the same gas station. They were towing a beat up old clunker and the wheel had fallen off of that stupid car. We asked for his insurance and, conveniently for him, he said he didn't have his insurance card, but he would be sure to get in touch with us to give it to us later. Being the avid People's Court fan that I am, I know that you ALWAYS call the police to make a report, no matter how insignificant you think it might be. We told the dude I was on the phone with 911 to get an officer out to make a report. Silly him, turns out he DID have his insurance card on him. Right after he found out the police were coming his insurance card magically appeared.

So the police made the report, we got all of dude's info and then we waited for my parents to come rescue us. They let us borrow their Expo until we could get a rental. So we dropped them off at home and went home ourselves to fall into bed. Thomas woke up early the next morning to start calling insurance companies and stuff. He went out to the Expo to get something, only to find out that my parents car had been broken into. They smashed a window because they saw a purse in there. Too bad for them it was Emma's purse and it was filled with My Little Ponies. Ha ha on them! But too bad for us. So we made more phone calls to get someone out to repair the window.

So much drama! We are still at home and will hopefully head out to Utah tomorrow in a rental. I am so thankful that the one call we didn't have to make was to a hospital! I feel really blessed that we are all okay and we will still make it to Utah for Thanksgiving! And we have a story we will talk about for the rest of our lives. Remember that one Thanksgiving when we ran over a tire...