The Miracle of St. Augustine

I'm back!

Did you notice I was gone?

I would have blogged about it, but I figured blogging on a public blog about a vacation while you were on it was tantamount to asking someone to burglarize your house. And since we've already had that experience (long ago and far away) I decided I would wait until we were back to announce to the world that we had, indeed, been gone.

Hopefully I can blog about our fun adventures over the next few days. But first I need to tell about the real miracle that happened to us--an alignment of many tender mercies that turned what could have been a really difficult situation into nothing more than a hot and sweaty inconvenience.

First, a word of explanation. We went to the Florida Keys with our wonderful friends Ken & Alisyn to celebrate this:

Erin the lovely graduate

The Miracle of St. Augustine took place on our way home. We left the Keys in the morning, and stopped in mid-afternoon for ice cream. When we went back out to our vans I convinced Alisyn to come and drive with me so that we could talk psycho-babble, while Russ drove their van and Ken got a nap.

We got on to the freeway, I moved into the left lane, and then happened to notice out of the corner of my eye that they were still in the far right lane at the same time that a big SUV was coming up too fast behind me. By the time I had gotten out of the way of the SUV Russ was quite a bit behind me and I didn't worry too much about it. We drove and chatted for a few minutes before I started watching my rearview mirror for Alisyn's van. I was surprised not to see it--I expected that Russ would be right behind me. After a few more minutes I reached for the cell phone to call him and ask where he was, and that's when I realized that he had taken the cell phone with him. I asked Alisyn for her phone, and she said that one of her girls had borrowed it and so it was in the other van. Which meant that we were in our van with no cell phones, and Russ & Ken were in the other van with approximately 6 cell phones!

I pulled into the right hand lane and slowed down, figuring that I must have been going faster than I realized and that within a few minutes they would catch up to us. Alisyn and I both watched our mirrors, waiting for the van to appear. A couple of times we thought we saw it, but it was never the right one. Finally we decided that we needed to pull off & stop for a few minutes, and if we still didn't see them, go find a phone.

I pulled off right before an exit and was surprised to see a small turtle on the ground in front of the van. In my other life I am a turtle-saver, and so I hopped out and picked it up. It was a soft-shelled turtle and felt a lot different than I expected. I also didn't expect it to try to scratch me with it's feet, so I dropped it and then picked it up and tossed it gently back into the grass beside the road. Hopefully it saw the error of it's ways at that point and decided to stay away from the interstate.

After waiting for a few minutes and still not seeing Alisyn's van we started our van again and went in search of a phone booth. I was a little worried about finding one--I'd read that now that almost everyone has a cell phone they're starting to take out some of the phone booths. Which is all fine and dandy, unless all of your cell phones are in an undetermined location somewhere in Florida and you don't know where that is!

I circled one gas station, drove past another one, and we decided that we'd have better luck if we went to a nearby hotel. Unfortunately the road I was on was a dead end and so I turned around and went towards the gas stations again on my way to the hotel. Alisyn & I were discussing our options, including begging strangers at the gas station to let us borrow their cell phones if we struck out at the hotel.

Tender mercy #1 happened when sharp eyed Rachel spotted a pay phone at the first gas station. (Guess her eyes are better than mine!) We pulled up and hopped out of the van with all of the change we could find. First we called Russ's cell phone--no answer. Then we scrounged up some more coins and called Ken's. Joy of joys, he answered.

"Ken," I said, "We don't know where you guys are, and you have all of the cell phones!"

and then he said what I had not expected to hear.

"We're broken down on the side of the road--the serpentine belt came off," he explained. "We're at mile marker 101."

We had exited at #123. No wonder we hadn't seen them in a long time!

I promised him we'd be there as soon as possible, and then Alisyn and I jumped back into the van and we drove 20 minutes south. As we got closer to mile marker 101 we started watching the other side of the road, and sure enough--there they were. We flashed our lights and honked but they had already seen us coming and were waving across all the lanes of traffic. We drove to the next exit, got off, got back on going north, and within a few minutes were pulling up behind them. This is what we saw.

It was HOT and HUMID and really buggy, and the kids ran and jumped into our air conditioned van right away. Don't they look happier here?

When we got there they told us that the tow truck was supposed to arrive any minute, but it didn't. It was probably another half hour before it did arrive. While we were waiting (and sweating) they told us what had happened. Russ had only driven for a few minutes before the car started steering funny. He heard a funny sound under the car and pulled off the side of the road, which woke Ken up. They couldn't figure out what was wrong until Ken looked under the van and saw that it was a problem with the serpentine belt. (A car part I've never heard of but one they've had a lot of trouble with.)

Here's a picture of Russ with the belt, which was shredded.

Ken said that after they realized what was wrong they immediately called AAA and ordered a tow truck. Then they got ready to call us and realized that they had all of the cell phones and no way to find out where we were. They told us that at that point they said a prayer, and within two minutes we called from the pay phone. Tender mercy #2. (And tender mercy #2 would have happened even faster if Russ had noticed that his phone was ringing and answered it!)

The tow truck finally arrived and the driver assured Ken that they would be able to find a shop to fix the belt, even though it was by now 7pm on a Saturday evening. He hoisted the van up onto his truck, which is always interesting to watch,

and away he drove with Ken & Alisyn, leaving us with a few extra kids in our van.


We followed them into St. Augustine to an auto parts store, since Ray the tow truck driver had called around and not found any shops opened. Fortunately for all, Ray the tow truck driver used to work for Daytona, and thought he might be able to fix the broken belt. Now I don't know if all tow truck drivers can replace a serpentine belt, but I'm going to call Ray tender mercy #3. Especially after we learned that the reason that the tow truck didn't show up for so long was that they had problems finding one, and finally called Ray even though he doesn't work for them (whoever them is) anymore. I think Ray & his Daytona past were worth waiting for.

No one had much cash and Ken & Alisyn didn't know how much Ray's services were going to cost, so we went and found an ATM. I think Alisyn knowing the PIN for her credit card was tender mercy #4, since she couldn't find her cash card and Jason had mine in the other van. I never know any of my PIN numbers, in fact I doubt they exist. I can only use my cash card to get cash. So I was really impressed.

She got out about $250 and figured that with what Ken had in his wallet that would surely be enough. And then we took the kids to a Chik-Fil-A that we'd seen to let them burn off some energy in the play area.

Much to our surprise Russ & Ken arrived only 15 minutes or so after us. When we asked how much Ray from Daytona had charged them, Ken told us some obscenely low amount--something like $30 for the 10 mile tow and fixing the belt too. We were surprised and Alisyn was delighted. Tender mercy #5.

When it was finally time to order some food Josh happened to point out the party platters. I jokingly asked the cashier (who asked about Jason's BYUI t-shirt and told us that her twin brothers are on missions right now!) if we could order a platter instead of separate meals, and she said we could. We ended up ordering a platter of chicken strips, a gallon of lemonade, and then a platter of fruit. The manager, Hank, brought us plates, bowls, forks, and a container of yummy caramel dip to go with the fruit. It was a fabulous meal--much better than we would have ended up with otherwise, and probably cheaper too. Tender mercy #6.

Our trip had some complications--we had problems with our hotwired hotel reservations on the way to FL and on the way back. Those problems were irritating and made me tired and cranky. But in comparison to the problems that we could have had with Ken & Alisyn's van, they were nothing--just an inconvenience. There were so many ways things could have been much worse with their van, and we were so grateful for all of the little things that fell into place to help us.

As we drove out of St. Augustine and back towards the freeway this is what we saw --a lovely ending to the Miracle of St. Augustine!