Why I am so glad we have cell phones!

Earlier this month I posted about how I save a ton of money on my cell phone. My cell phone bill for this year will be a total of $10! Today I was so glad that I had found this inexpensive way to have a cell phone instead of abandoning it when the bills got high.

The 4 of us were driving on the highway to the accountant this morning when black smoke started spewing out of the back of the car. I was in the fast lane going up a decently steep hill. I freaked out trying to figure out how to pull all the way to the slow lane and off of the highway as fast as I could. Luckily Professor X helped me to move over the lanes. In the meantime, the RPMs were between 6000 and 7000, and smoke was coming out from the hood. It smelled awful.

God took care of us and enabled us to pull over in the one area on the entire highway that was not a skinny breakdown lane. In fact, the breakdown lane went onto a field and into a wooded area. We sat in the car for about 10 minutes trying to get the engine to cool down. The doors were open so we didn’t choke on all of the smoke and the kids were freezing. Thank God it was a sunny day and probably in the high 50s. Professor X checked the oil and coolant and both were fine. After we thought the engine had cooled enough we tried starting up the car and trying again. The RPMs shot up and the smoke started coming out again. It was no use.

By the grace of God, Professor X and I both had fully charged cell phones on us. He spent close to 45 minutes with the towing company trying to arrange a tow truck. In the meantime, I got the kids out of the car and took them as far from the highway as I could (I’m scared to death to be sitting in a car while trucks zoom past me at 60 mph. While Professor X arranged a tow truck, I started calling for rides (a tow truck could not fit all of us). Unfortunately, I only know 2 phone numbers. The first one is my brother-in-laws but he was not home. The second one is my mom, but she lives about 500 miles away! My mom answered and I had her try to get into my email and look up some phone numbers for me. She was eventually able to find a few numbers and started calling them. Just when she got hold of one of them, my brother-in-law called and said he could pick us up. Phew!

The tow truck and my brother-in-law arrived at the same time. Our car is now at a shop waiting for Monday so that we can have it looked at. We pray its not something too expensive as we are counting on this car to serve us for many more years!

Although I certainly do not wish for a breakdown to occur, this was one of the best possible scenarios. The weather was fine, Professor X was with me, we both had fully charged cell phones, we were able to get far away from the highway to stay safe, no one got too hungry/cold/thirsty. Praise God!