Thankful to be Alive

skid marks in the mud

Tonight I am thankful for my life. I had quite the adventures coming home for Thanksgiving Break today. Looking back on the danger of many of the situations I was in, I am SO lucky.

I typically used the BYU-I ride board to get rides home and back up to school. It is a lot cheaper- usually between $20-$30 roundtrip instead of $80 roundtrip, which is what the Salt Lake Express shuttle charges. Now, you really never know what you're going to get when you ride with strangers. I've done this quite a few times and have met some interesting, some different, and some facsinating people.

Now that you have a little background info, I'll tell you what all happened today. My ride picked me up at about 9:15ish. Four of us had to squish in the backseat until Idaho Falls (30 min. away),where two people were being dropped off. Yeah, that's against the law and I'm definitely NOT a fan. So, we get to Idaho Falls and had to drive a long ways out of our way to drop the girls off. We get back on the freeway and get going again. By the way, it was lightly snowing. Not sticking, but the roads were definitely slick. When we hit the Blackfoot area, however,the snow was coming down hard and sticking to the road. This perhaps was when I started fearing for my life just a bit. Visability was low. Our driver, however, continued to drive 75 mph in the snow! Yikes! Luckily we made it through that patch alive. Once we got outside of Blackfoot it was just raining.

We had to stop at the Lava Hot Springs exit to pick up another passenger. So, we did that and then our driver started heading the opposite direction of the freeway. We reminded her that the freeway was the other direction. She drove for a little bit and tried to find a place to turn around. She found a street and made a quick, sharp turn. That, combined with the slick road, proved to be a poor choice. We slid, and ended up on the side of a small hill- just before a ditch. It was very wet and muddy. We were completely stuck.

We were all so grateful that we did not roll. Many of us thought we were going to. It all seemed so unreal to me. Things changed so quickly- in a split second, really. One second we were on the road, the next we were stuck in mud. I am extremely grateful we picked up that other passenger. He had just come from the Lava Hot Springs area, so he knew some people there who could help get us out. We were in McCammon,Idaho. Countryside. Idaho all the way. I felt like I was in a movie or something. There we were, stranded in the pouring rain in the middle of nowhere. After a series of challenges we were finally pulled free- an hour later.

We were back on the road and headed home. However, as if falling off the side of the road didn't give me a heart attack already, we had another close call. There was someone in our blind spot and our driver attempted to get over into the other lane. Luckily the other driver honked. But, we were really close to hitting him.
And, not to mention that our driver was texting while driving all through out. That alone is dangerous and very serious. FYI- the driver is a first semester freshman girl.

Perhaps I've been over-dramatic about the whole experience, but it really has shaken me up a bit. We could have died as she was texting while driving, or when she was driving fast through the snow, or when we slid off the road. But, the Lord was definitely watching out for us. Needless to say, I will not be riding back to Rexburg with her.