This past weekend we (Annie, myself, and our boy Sammy) decided to head out through Shandon to Shell Creek Road (out in the sticks) to see how the wildflowers were going so far this year. The drive was great. Amazingly green rolling hills and batches of yellow flowers here and there interspersed with a little blue and some orange.
We pulled over when we saw the running water in Shell Creek and the huge bed of yellow flowers surrounding it. I thought it would be a good spot to go down and see the water and grab some photos. All was good until we got back in the Jeep to head further down the road. Turned the key and nothing. I mean, it tried to turn over but it was extremely weak. We popped the hood and looked at stuff, like we knew what to do.
There were a handful of other cars out there doing the same thing we were but nobody stopped and the one person parked by us had no jumper cables. Guess what, we didn’t have jumper cables either. That has since changed…we bought a pair to keep in the Jeep.
As Annie was on the phone with Triple A trying to explain the issue through crappy cell signal, a woman drove by with her windows down and just stared at us with a smile and kept going. As she went out of sight Annie and I both thought that was strange and relatively rude.
Guess what…Annie and I were completely wrong. That woman appeared a few minutes later and asked if we were okay. I explained the situation and she said “I have just what you may need”. She pulls over and gets this little case out that had a small battery pack and jumper cables in it and she jumped us. Just like that. Her name is Shelly and she was extremely kind. She lives in Morro Bay and was out exploring the wildflowers as well.
Also, turns out, she invented this thing called SmudgeAway (micro fiber cleaning mitts for glasses, phones, tablets, cameras, etc.). She proceeded to give me a few of these for free, hugged us all, and we were on our way. This isn’t an infomercial, I just thought it was an interesting tidbit.
We headed home and decided to go to O’Reilly’s and have them install a new battery. To do that we had to borrow jumper cables from our neighbor…you know, because it wouldn’t start without. Oh, almost forgot, we also had Triple A come to the house to confirm it was the battery. It was but they this particular Triple A group doesn’t deal with this type of battery. Thankfully O’Reilly’s does and the guy there installed it and we are back in business. And yes, this is where we grabbed the jumper cables for any future needs.
All of this may sound like dumb life stuff, and you’re right. We all go through these sorts of things. I talk about our day because it had us thinking. Getting stuck sucks. That feeling of being stuck or helpless is just not fun. You can feel stuck like we did in that situation or you can feel stuck in a job or a relationship or whatever…feeling stuck is just a bummer. I guess the lesson is to be prepared as much as possible and be proactive when you are aware of feeling stuck.
Another thing to consider doing less of is rushing to judgement. We hate it when people do it to us but we did that to Shelly. The person we negatively judged ended up saving us. Judging people really does nothing positive at all. Let it go, move on. Look at your life situations and find the learning, the takeaways that make life richer, and sometimes easier.
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