Oil Everywhere

Photo on Foter.com

This is the story of how my truck broke down on me. It was Sunday night after a long weekend or downhill racing. I was tired beaten up and walking with a limp due to a nasty crash that happened on Saturday. Even from my look you could tell it had already been a rough weekend. Although what I didn’t know is that it was about to get much worse. I pulled into the parking lot of my bike shop, to get my bike repaired since it got pretty messed up in the nasty crash I had. As I was parking I noticed that my engine light was flashing at me. I didn’t think much of it since my engine light was always on whenever I drove and it occasionally flashed at me. This was only normal since my truck had around 370,000 miles so it lived a pretty rough life.

I had to get my friend Landon back to his house on time so I was in a rush. I quickly dropped my bike off and ran back out to my truck. I started my truck and the engine light was not blinking anymore so assumed that the truck was now fine. I backed out of the parking spot and then shifted into forward and pressed on the gas. To my surprise the truck did not move forward at all. I tried again and still nothing, The truck wouldn’t even move an inch. I turned off the truck and popped the hood so I could see if there was something simple preventing it from moving. As I stepped onto the ground I slipped a little. I then noticed that I was standing in a giant puddle of oil. I thought to myself oh god this can’t be good. I looked under the truck and saw oil just pouring out of my transmission. My heart sank, the one day my truck finally gives up is the day where I am in a rush, of course. I thought to myself wow my truck won’t run and there is oil everywhere. At this point I am pretty defeated since nothing seems to be going right. So I hop back into my truck and call my dad. I told him what happened and he said he would come over as soon as he could so he could tow my truck to my uncles house where we could hopefully fix it.

I hop back in my truck and wait for my dad to arrive. As i’m sitting in the drivers seat I start thinking about everything that had happened. All of a sudden out of no where I get the urge to laugh. I start laughing over the thought that everything had gone as badly as it possibly could have. Although the fact that I was laughing bout it seemed to make me feel better about it. Even my friend Landon started to make jokes with me about it. Then very quickly the feeling of tension and anger started to go away and was replaced with laughter. My dad arrived and then assessed the situation and decided that we would just tow it to my uncles house which was only about 3 minutes away. So we hooked everything up and towed the truck away. Luckily for me that one step went right. We got to my uncles and then assessed the damage. We figured out that it was pretty bad, and decided that it wouldn’t be worth the money or the time to try to replace transmission on that truck. It had almost 400,000 miles so the truck was not worth much at all. We left it with my uncle so that he could use it for parts if we needed to.

On the drive home my dad and I were talking and he said, “it is a good thing it broke down because now you’ve had your license long enough to get a nicer car that is more reliable”. So I started searching for cars and came across a 2008 Mustang GT. It was a long shot to ask for something as nice as that but I showed it to my dad and he said we could go look at it. He said yes and when we got there it was such a good deal that we decided to buy it. I had been saving up money for a while so I was able to cover most of the cost. This car ended up bringing me lots of laughter and fun over the summer. So I am glad that my truck broke down when it did. Overall I am glad that that day went the way that it did. It started out bad but then it ended well and even led to something much better than I thought it could have. Since I had the ability to laugh a bad situation actually turned into a day that wasn’t all too bad. My ability to laugh gave cheered me up instead of making me feel worse about the situation. This bad day also led to many more good days throughout the summer because of how everything turned out and for that I am thankful.