Last Night's Adventure

Let's start by saying that nothing went as planned last night. After work I had planned to go see my dad at home after his hernia surgery, go to soup night at my mother-in-law's house and then maybe get groceries on the way home. This is what happened instead:

I left from work to go see my dad at the hospital, not at home. He had some non-life-threatening complications and was having to stay longer than expected. Once I got there, he was deciding whether or not to stay overnight and I sat with my parents until the decision was made - he would stay.

My mom had to work today, so she wasn't able to stay overnight at the hospital and there were some things my dad needed (toothbrush, etc.) from the house for his stay, so I volunteered to drop the stuff by on my way back from soup night.

By the time I got to soup night, it was already 8 p.m. I hung out for about an hour until I knew I needed to get going so I could get back to Norman at a decent hour. I got the things my dad needed from my parents' house and headed to the hospital.

After dropping the things off with my dad and walking with my mom out to the parking lot, it was about 10:45 or so and I started on my way home. All was well until I exited on Main St. to stop by Walmart to get gas.

You see, my car had a quarter of a tank of gas when I left Norman after work. I knew the last quarter always goes fast, but I had driven to OKC and back before on E, so I figured I would be fine. Levi can attest to the fact that I'm always pushing the limit with the gas light.

As you can already guess, I ran out of gas on the Main St. off-ramp at the very top of the hill. At this point, it's well after 11 p.m. AND my phone is dead. Great.

Luckily, there was a girl my age right behind me who asked if I was okay and she offered to take me to get a gas can and some gas. Since she wasn't a creepy man, I let her. Unfortunately, the can I bought had an extremely short neck, making it almost impossible to get the gas to flow into the tank. Nevertheless, I did what I could and the car still wouldn't start (remember it's on an uphill slant).

The girl (amazingly, I never thought to ask her name) offered to take me back to the gas station to get more gas so that's what we did. After round two, the car still wouldn't start! At this point I was a little panicky, but I apologized profusely and asked if she would mind just taking me home because Levi would be home from work in about an hour. She happily obliged.

Once I got home, I plugged in my phone to call my mom (who was worried because I had sent her a text about running out of gas and getting help) and then I called Levi to tell him to hurry home. I readied the gas tank we use for the lawn mower (it has a longer neck) and waited.

As Levi and I made our way back to the car about 1 a.m., we noticed a police car behind it right as Levi was getting a call from police dispatch telling him that our car was on the side of the road. When the officer found out it was just a gas problem, he said he'd stay long enough to make sure the car started.

Keep in mind that this whole time, my hazard lights were on because my car was left in a very vulnerable spot - in the dark! After we poured in all the gas we had, the car still wouldn't start. Now my battery was dead from the lights running for almost 2 hours.

Luckily, we had our jumper cables and got the car started again. However, since the accelerator needed to be pressed constantly to get the fuel pump to run the gas through the system and make it up the hill, Levi wasn't able to drive it until the officer told him to drive with both feet (one on the accelerator and one on the brake). Levi said this was an interesting experience, but we made it to the gas station.

What could go wrong now, you ask? Well, the gas station was closed and the pump wouldn't turn on, even when paying with a card. We thought we could get home though, so the officer followed us just in case (I think Levi's work uniform helped us get special treatment).

We made it home safely and took the gas can to another station to fill up the car back at home. We finally had everything taken care of by 2 a.m. and I was up at 7 this morning for work. Whew! It's time for a nap.

And in case you're wondering, yes I did learn my lesson.