The Dance of the Mumby Mobile

Well, let's back up and start at what I did yesterday. Yesterday I hopped in the mighty Mumby Mobile and drove over to Red Deer. Where I got healed. This nasty sickness that has been hurting me finally came to an end. It is all thanks to the Torwalt healing pool, otherwise known as their hot tub. A few of us were in there for an astonishingly long time.

So long that I had to stumble into the shower and blast myself with cold water because I thought I was going to die. Then I stumbled into bed and layed there for a long, long time still thinking I was going to die.

I decided I was hungry so Bryan and I went to Denny's and now everything is better. I think that by nearly killing myself I killed the virus first.

Then I had the world's greatest sleep. Which was nice. Because I got back into the truck the next morning (today) and drove the most intense, stressful, worst ever stretch of winter driving I have ever done in my life.

I have driven in a lot of bad conditions. Nothing compares to this. After I crashed my truck I got out and literally had to hold onto the door of the truck because there was so much ice on the road.

Yes, you read that right... after I crashed the precious Mumby Mobile. Since I was driving in the middle of a near white-out blizzard I was already going slower then normal. It was about at that moment that the Mumby Mobile decided it loved the winter wonderland and started to dance freely in the pretty snow.

You must understand that while driving the Mumby Mobile in the winter you pretty much always have the back end fish tail on you. This is not an unusual occurance. You just left off the gas and drive gently through the "fun".

Not this time. The dance began. Mumby Mobile suddenly swerved left. I left off the gas and rolled my eyes. The Mumby Mobile swerved right. I began to worry and corrected the stearing a bit. The Mumby Mobile then decided to take this dance to a whole new level and pulled a triple axle right down the middle of the highway complete with screaming tires and bashing into the safety rails that kept me from rolling down the hill.

I joined the dance by yelling, "OH S**T!!" and then "Jesus, HELP!!"

I decided I'd toss both of those nice sayings out there and see which one would be honoured. The "Jesus HELP" one I think saved my life or at least the life of the Mumby Mobile for something very, very strange happened. As I was spinning around and around I bounced off the gaurd rail. I should have continued bouncing but I suddenly stopped. If I had not stopped I would have been t-boned by the cars that were right behind me.

I honestly thought that my back bumper got stuck to the guard rail, or that my tires had blown out because I stopped so suddenly in a direction that I shouldn't have been able to stop like that. I tried a few times to get my truck back into the right position, but the thing wouldn't budge.
So I got out to see how the heck I was going to unhook my bumper from the rail. I looked back there and... nope... it wasn't hooked. There is a fantastic new (deeeep) dent all down one side, but the bumper was not tangled. I scratched my head and wondered why I was not able to move forward at all.

I then looked at my rear tire and noticed something that totally boggles my mind. In the back of my truck we have a bunch of cement blocks that give it more weight so stupid stuff like this doesn't happen. "Somehow" one of those blocks managed to climb out of the box and get wedged perfectly in front of my rear tire, causing my truck to come to a complete stop and not bounce back into highway traffic. It was wedged so perfectly, that I couldn't even drive over it. I had to remove the cement block with my hands before the truck could go again.

I guess those cement blocks are in there for a good reason after all.

Some nice guys in a welding truck stopped and had ran down to my truck yelling, "Holy (swear words) are you alright man??"

I was perfectly fine. They helped me turn the truck around to face the right direction and then I was off again. Driving off through the worst winter storm ever.

Luckily I had the family cell phone with me so I called my parents, Aaron and Bobbie and Peter to pray for me. That got me through and I even ended up leading a large train of vehicles through the storm. I thought I might have been going too slow, but there were a few places to pass and nobody moved from their place in the line.

I prayed like mad that the snow would stop. I told the weather, "You can do what you want but you can't snow and there can be no wind until I get to Taber." The snow stopped, the wind stopped and the roads actually began to improve.

Once I got to Devon and Kristi's house it wasn't even five minutes and the snow hit like crazy.
I made it! Took me forever, but at least I got here. And now the Mumby Mobile has some extra character marks on it. I just need to find a new tail-light cover. The bulb didn't break... just the plastic.

Thus ends the most stressful drive of my life.