Weekend Adventures...Part 1

We had a really great fourth of July weekend. The beginning of it, however...was interesting.

Sadly, we didn't have a camera, because it was located at Nate's parents house.

So...here's a makeshift representation.

Backstory: Tuesday night, Nate and I were heading to the store to browse for some building materials. We get into the Mazda, and it won't start...at all. The radio doesn't work, the air conditioning isn't functioning, and everything else is just not going so great. We call our dads, and they both tell us that the battery is probably dead. We get a jump (after attempting to pop the clutch) from our apartment maintenance man, and drive about 20 miles to the nearest walmart...which is all that's open in the way of mechanics at 5:00 in this area. They're full, but they offer to give us tools to change the battery after checking to make sure that it's dead. The battery is dead. Totally, and completely dead. So we buy a new one and head home. Life is good, the car is working, and I babble on about how glad I am that we found out before we headed down to Utah County and got stuck on the side of the road somewhere along the interstate.

This brings us to Wednesday night. Nate took off a day of work, so we decided to head down early and spend a lot of time with our families. Everything was going great. We were packed up, and started heading out around 5:00 PM, confident in our new battery and the fact that the car was working. We made sure to pray before leaving, as is our standard practice before heading out on car trips.

This is us, listening to the radio, and enjoying ourselves.

This is us enjoying our air conditioning. For a 20 year old car, this air conditioning is fantastic.

Suddenly, the radio stopped working, and so did the air conditioning. This is Nate and I looking confused. Soon after that, the car stopped being able to accelerate too. At this point, we're just south of Salt Lake, in the carpool lane, and, apart from no longer being able to go faster, out turn signals also don't work, and the gas gage drops from about half full to empty. We decide to pull over to the left side of the road.

This is the Mazda, sick, tired, and not going anywhere.

Thankfully, we had cell phones, and called our parents again. My mom, who has lots of connections, got us a tow truck who took us to Midas, who fixed the car the next morning. We waited in the car for about an hour or so for the tow truck guy, which was a bit hot. The guy with the tow truck came up from Utah County, to Salt Lake County, got the mazda on the truck really quickly, and was super friendly. It was really nice, given that the situation wasn't all that great. He also gave us a discount on the tow, which was really, really helpful. The mazda is running great now, it just needed a new alternator.

More about the rest of the 4th of July later--but for now, thanks so much to everyone who helped us with the car issue--it was really helpful, and it made a very stressful situation very bearable.