Another day, another trip, more new unexpected friends

I go on adventures every day. Some days my adventures are a little bit different than other days. Friday's adventure was such an experience. I decided the other week to travel home and surprise my brothers and sisters with my graceful presence. The plan was to arrive home right before the kids got home from school. I enlisted Erma my cousin, a gal in the ward named Heather whom I love, and another gal named Nicole whom I didn't know until that morning but now I have a huge place in my heart for her. The last two both served their missions in Mesa. So at approximately 6:16 and 24 seconds am MST on Friday morning we left on our merry way. We had a beautiful drive making great time all day, timing was working out great and I was very much looking forward to our surprise. As we approached Flagstaff I was a little nervous because of our last experience coming in Flagstaff but we reached our regular gas fill-up stop without sign of trouble. We got onto the road again and had been about a minute when the battery light came on (we just bought a new battery a week ago) then the car over-heated and the power steering went out. Luckily we were able to get off the interstate pretty quickly and pulled of into a Conoco station. I sure realized that I would be a lot buffer in the arms if we didn't have such a thing as power steering. Heather had to help me pull the wheel a couple times. I feel like I have truly come to know cars a lot better lately, at least I've come to know mine, inside and out. I called my dad and told him we were having trouble and I'd keep him posted, looked under the hood at everything. It all looked mostly normal to me except that the belt looked kind of loose and there was fluid of some sort pouring out of some hose...I called Carie's dad...who has been more than generous with helping me through my pathetic knowledge of cars, and as I started to talk to him, some man stuck his head under our hood and said "well this is your problem" and pulled the hose right out...well almost right out, it was still connected. Carie's dad said that that sounded like it was the problem and to get that worked out...so our friend Alvin told us to go to Jiffy Lube...well we inched our way there and met some more friends...who's names I don't know...oh wait, one really nice guy who called people for us, his name was Larson Spencer... who told us that that wasn't the real problem, we had a broken idler...whatever that is....and that is why the belt came off. Hm, so we call a tow truck and have an appointment at Randy's garage. So then we sat in the car for an hour waiting for the tow truck man to come. An hour passes, and then some, and we finally see him coming, we were rather excited. Our tow truck man, we decided to call him Frank, said that we could ride in our car on top of the tow truck!!! It was super fun, kind of like riding on a ride at Disneyland...or six flags. He tilted the bed of his truck, hooked some hooks onto the bottom of our car, and then it pulled us up on top of the bed. It was rather exciting. We got to Randy's and found out that Frank's name was really John...but people around there called him Juan, so we did too. I'm sure we brought light and happiness in Juan's, Randy's, and Curt's (who was the guy who actually fixed the car and offered the borken part to us as a memory of our adventure...we declined offering it to him as a souvenir...he declined too...so it got thrown away) lives yesterday. Sure enough they found this thing that was supposed to hold the belt on totally broken and no longer holding the belt on, they replaced it, and just over three hours after breaking down we were back on our way car fixed and all. I don't know that I'll ever drive through Flagstaff without getting scared that my car will break down now. So...yep, there you have it. Great fun with my new friends. While they were fixing our car we took ourselves a little walk up and down the street in Flagstaff, it was a grand walk...and that was good too...thus ended another adventure fourteen hours after it started. Oh my happy life...we're super blessed that it broke down when it did and that we could meet Alvin, Larson, John, Randy, and Curt...timing and everything was perfect... :)