My ride in the back of a State Troupers car: by Melissa Gafford

While this makes for a very interesting title, it's not the best place to start my story so I'll back up and start at the beginning.

This afternoon David and I went out to lunch before loading up the truck for him to make his first of many journeys up to Minnesota. The whole drive out he kept commenting on how the truck felt funny and the steering was weird. (We'd taken the truck in to get new brakes, etc. last week and this was really the first that we'd driven it since getting it home.) On our way home our plans for the day were abruptly changed when the tie rod broke, making it completely impossible to steer the truck and our two front tires were pointed in opposite directions. David turned on the flashers and hopped out thinking we'd just dropped a tire or something and within a minute a state trouper pulled up behind us to give us assistance. That was where we spent the next 45 minutes as we waited for the tow truck, backing up traffic on Schoenner Rd., David out shooting the breeze talking recipes and restaurants with our new lady officer friend. The tow truck finally arrived and David rode along to go back to the Ford service station (where we'd been last week), while the officer offered to drive me home to pick up our other car and meet David. But of course, the only available seat was in the back. I had my camera in my purse and really wanted to have David take a picture but figured it probably wouldn't be appropriate so I decided against it. She took me home, I got the car and met David as we had planned. That was where we spent the next hour as we waited to see if the service department was going to take responsibility for what had just happened or whether we were going to be responsible for another huge repair bill. Fortunately they took the blame and the bill (both for repairs and towing), but had to get the part from another place so we went back home for a few hours to wait until they called us around 5:30 to tell us it was ready.

As much of a pain as this experience was, we couldn't have been more thankful. We went through a whole series of "what if's" and "coulda been's" this afternoon and came to the conclusion that this was the absolute best possible scenario aside from nothing being wrong with the truck in the first place.

Option #1: We had considered David taking the car and leaving me the truck. Let me just tell you how horrible that would have been for me if that had happened when I was on my own with my husband out of state! Not good.

Option #2: We were going to take the car to lunch but decided the truck needed gas so we changed our minds. If we'd taken the car instead, David would have discovered this problem going 70 mph on 696, probably resulting in a rolled Expedition and a collision with other vehicles. Not to mention all of the guitars, amps, etc that would have been packed in the back of the truck!

There are just so many other little scenarios like that that would have made such a difference in how this played out. God allowed an inconvenience, but he prevented a complete disaster. Having that perspective helped us get through the inconvenience a lot better.

That, and I also got to take my first (and hopefully last) trip in the back of a State Trouper's car. What a day!