Will and I left Sunday afternoon for Williamsburg, Virginia. It was smooth sailing, a good trip even (for the first 5 or so hours). We listened to an entire secret church by David Platt, traffic wasn't too bad and the a/c worked so it started out as a good trip. Then when we were 110 miles away, my car started shaking really badly. It felt like we had a flat tire so we pulled over. Will checked all the tires and they looked fine so we thought we were imagining things. I got back on the road and only made it back up to 40 miles an hour and the car started shaking violently again and fishtailing. Needless to say we pulled over again...the only problem is it still looked like nothing was wrong! We were about to call AAA When we saw there was a weigh station half a mile in front of us thankfully. So we waited for a break in traffic and drove to the weigh station going 20 mph on the highway. I'm so thankful it was there because it was an hour and a half or so before AAA could pick us up. They got us and we finally pulled into the hotel around 11pm
1. One of the bands in the back tire had busted, leaving the tire really lumpy (this caused the violent shaking).
2. The two front tires were starting to reveal steel on the inside edges because my car was so unaligned
3. All four struts on my car had apparently been shot for years but someone had tried to cover that fact up by propping them up with foam pieces...the guys couldn't tell how long ago that had been done, but by looking at the pieces its been at least a few years (that was super reassuring)
4. The boots on the two front axels busted awhile ago so the axels now need to be replaced because it will start to rust soon.
5. Everything that can leak is leaking (except for the gas I think)
6. The back breaks are at 20%
7. Something with the rear sway bars was wrong as well
The guys were sympathetic and said that they would fix the bare minimum that we needed to get home which was the first three things that I listed. The bad part was that replacing the tires and the struts cost us more than what our car is worth.
The two things that topped it all off:
1. Will's mom got into an accident coming to pick us up from the Toyota dealership. Thankfully no one got hurt.
2. On the way home on Thursday, we picked up our car and started on our way home. Within 45 min my car made 3 loud popping/cracking sounds and on the second one, we definitely saw something metal flying from my car. We then drove all the way back to the dealership and they looked at/worked on my car for another 3 hours. The guy then came out and said it was this little rubber piece that cut down on noise. However, It was one of those conversations where he was just being a little too sweet....The kind of nice where he is being nice to cover his own butt and serve his own purposes rather than to serve us. I believe that little piece was a partial truth but I also believe that he was covering something they had done wrong the first time around because there were too many holes in his story and explanation (real assuring I know)...so we didn't get home til 11pm and we had left at 10 that morning...What a day and what a week.
Though through it all I could still see the grace of God working. That one tire revealed the issues my car was having and if the problem was revealed by one of those foam pieces failing, the situation could have been much worse and other pieces of the car could have been damaged so in that God protected us in that. I'm so thankful that God allowed us to break down right beside a weigh station so we weren't waiting on the side of a busy highway. I'm thankful that God gave Will's mom a feeling that she should up her towing service on AAA from 100 miles a year to 200 mile towing because that extra 10 miles we would have had to pay for otherwise would have cost $50. I'm also thankful that God provided for the repairs through money that we had saved for some thing else and through money that had been given to us the week before. I'm also so thankful that we finally made it home safely from that long week.
Don't you hate it when you are so glad to get back to work so you can de-stress from your vacation?
Anyways, here are some pictures from the happier moments of the week...
Anyways, that was our adventurous vacation of the year...and I'm kind of glad we have a nice break before our next vacation!