What Happens in Vegas Gets Blogged About

  

After spending a wonderful week in Salt Lake City, Utah, I started the drive back to Ridgecrest. To break up the drive and give my leg a break, I stopped at my friend's house in St George for the night. We had dinner and a fun time hanging out.

I got up early Saturday morning to beat construction and concert (EDC) traffic on the i-15 through Las Vegas. I had made plans to stop at my friend Emily's house to see her new kitchen remodel and was about 20 min away from her place when my car lost power. I had been using cruise control so when it turned off and I couldn't accelerate to keep my speed, I knew something was pretty wrong.

  

(the only photos I have from this part were what I posted on Snapchat...)

I pulled over to the side of the road and called Tony. He had me check the battery cables (I'd just gotten a brand new battery at Walmart the day before AND a car inspection check at Les Schwab the day before that where everything checked out fine (minus the battery...)

I called our insurance but we didn't have any roadside assistance. It's a long story as to why. So then I messaged Emily to see if her husband could come help and she and her husband both headed my way with some gas. Tony jumped in the car and started the 3.5-hour drive to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, I kept praying nobody would hit my car.  I see stories like that in the news often, so terrible!

It felt like forever but really it wasn't long at all, that I was watching traffic go by when my friend Emily & her husband Scott arrived to rescue me. Scott added some gas to my car and it started right up. So strange, because our gas gauge has never ever been incorrect. So I got back on the road to meet them at their house but something was still wrong. I couldn't accelerate up to the speed I needed to be at. Things didn't sound right. Worried about damaging the car further, I pulled back over onto the shoulder of the road again, as did Scott & Emily. We discussed things, I was able to drive carefully on the shoulder of the road to the Ely exit and to the gas station where I've stopped many times for gas. We looked the car over again and decided to take the side road along the freeway to their house and I would look up a shop to take the car to. But then Emily thought of a shop and I followed them there instead. I felt awful for 'ruining' their morning by coming out to help me and everything took a while but luckily (blessing in disguise?) their plans seemed fairly flexible so I tried not to feel too down about it.

At Tire Works Total Car Care

After giving the shop all the information I could, Scott & Emily took me to their house so I could wait for Tony to arrive and figure out what to do. Keep the car? Sell it? Leave it in Vegas to be fixed and come back for it the next week? I was on pins and needles waiting to hear what the diagnosis would be.

About 15 minutes before Tony arrived at Emily's, I got the call. 

High-Pressure Fuel Pump

 This part had gone out and needed to be replaced. And no shop carried it, it would have to be ordered from California. And it had to come from the dealer ($1,389 vs. $600 on Rock Auto's website), however, the shop was not able to put in an after-market part because they could not put their warranty on it. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me but there was no way around it.

Ugh, double ugh because it turned into a very expensive repair. More than I've ever spent on a car repair in my life. I am pretty sure. But we had no good way to get the car to Ridgecrest where Tony could fix it himself so we were at the mercy of the shop. The shop seemed confident in being able to fix the issue and didn't charge us to expedite the part and even came down a little on the price of the pump. They also needed to replace the spark plugs and do an oil change.

So we were looking at it being fixed by 1pm on Saturday. Emily (bless her heart, truly!) invited us to stay the night at her house which we debated on driving back to Ridgecrest and coming back in a few days to pick up the car or just staying...we decided to stay.

To occupy ourselves we went to see a movie (The Lost City)

Went to a park to hang out and try and clean up the car since we'd moved everything from the Hyundai Accent to the Ford Escape kind of quickly.

Met up with my friend Mariana and her husband Evan at a Winco to give her a cockatiel cookie cutter my friend Andrew had made for me (he had made me a few)... It was so fun to see them and catch up a bit.

Tried a new Hawaiian Food place for dinner Kono's Northshore

    

We walked around the strip after parking near the MGM and made it all the way down to the Bellagio. Man, my legs were pretty tired towards the end.  Checked out the Hello Kitty Cafe where a girl in front of me spent almost $300 on getting one of almost everything in that little setup.

The picture on the left was my face after dinner. I am copying my shirt which says "I just can't" which is how I felt about my day overall but thanks to many miracles and tender mercies, I made it through. 

Here are the ones I noticed ~ 

• The car could have died anywhere on my trip, scariest place would have been the Virgin River Gorge in Arizona, with its hills and lack of cell service
• I was able to safely pull over enough to be out of the way of passing traffic and most cars moved into the lane farther from me which helped me feel safer
• I was a mile from an exit and could have walked there if I needed to. It was Ridgecrest windy outside though so I am glad I didn't have to do that
• I was able to get on a road alongside the freeway where I didn't have to drive as fast and it got me where I needed to be
• Emily and Scott were available. Scott is working on getting his own plumbing business started so his schedule is one he can set himself and they were more than willing to come help me out + bring some gas for my car in case that was the problem
• Emily, for thinking of a shop to take my car to so I didn't have to spend any time at all looking up shops and calling around
• Tony had the day off from work because he is working 4 - 10's now and was able to jump in the car to come help me
• Emily allowed me to stay at her house and then for Tony & I both to stay the night so we didn't have to pay for a hotel or sleep in the car
• The shop was able to get the part tons faster than we thought, Friday afternoon! and was able to do the work so we could pick up the car in the morning instead of waiting until 1pm on Saturday

Feeling so blessed and very very grateful for all the ways God watched out for me during what could have been a scarier and more stressful time than it already was.

I will add, that it was a bit unfortunate I missed a fun craft party I had been invited to on Friday evening, and Tony & I missed a ward service activity we had talked about going to on Saturday morning.

I wasn't able to see Emily on Saturday morning to say goodbye so I took this picture in her new kitchen instead and sent it to her. Doesn't it look amazing?!

Thanks for sticking through all my words and details to read about what happened!