Murphy's Law and my weekend adventures

Wikipedia: 


Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908:

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.^[3]

The Set Up:

For MONTHS my roommates and I have been planning that for reading days we would head down to Moab. For the past 2 years, our roommate M has been telling us that we have got to come home with her to Moab. So, we packed up my trusty little car, and headed out around 6:30 Thursday night. We had planned well. Thursday night to get here, Friday to hike a little and see the sights, Saturday to do a really exciting thing that will come out later. Back to Provo Saturday afternoon. (Because I teach Relief Society on Sunday... and have a final at 8am Monday morning-- which I have studied for already this morning!)

The Trip:

So we packed up, filled up, headed out and were on our way. Price canyon is apparently one of the most dangerous canyons in the US, but we'd planned our trip to include daylight and late enough in the year to avoid ice. We navigated the canyon beautifully, but as we were on the way out of it, lights in my dash came on. Now, for a car that is very basic (it's from the 80's and doesn't even have a gas light), lights are a bad, bad sign. It was the brake light, the emergency brake light and the battery light. 


I have enough car savvy to check the oil, tires and other fluid levels. Lights are beyond me. So as soon as we were out of the canyon, I called my Dad-- the poor man, only gets calls when something catastrophic happens with the car... He told me it could be a few very simple things, or something mildly catastrophic. We opted against stopping at the first town out of the canyon (Helper, UT) and made it to Price around 8pm. We stopped and asked directions to an auto parts store at a maverick station and the guys at O'Riley's were more than helpful. They pulled out their cool little doo-dad and after poking around under my hood for a minute confirmed the worst. The Alternator was bad. 


Here's where I'll whine about what happened, then I'll talk about the good things that came out of this:


This couldn't have happened last weekend when I was in Idaho at my grandpa's, less than 5 miles from my uncle who is a mechanic, and surrounded by my dad and brother who have manly car skills and the tools to do it!
It couldn't have happened in Provo where I have semi-mechanically minded friends, or could get by without a car until my brother or dad could come down and help ME repair it. 
I had to drive an obscure 'granola' car here in american made country where they had to order the part (the one part in the state) down from Orem, which-- just so you know, the Orem O'Riley's is the best place to get old Volvo parts... they just have them... 
My last hurrah with my roommates has now been tainted... bah!


Ok, the good:


First-- I didn't brake down in the canyon! 
When it became apparent that we would have to spend the night in price, we went to one of the cheap looking motels coming into town, and when I asked for a room the chick just looked at me like I was crazy. She then called over to the one hotel in town that said they had a room available a few hours earlier. It was still available and NOT exorbitantly expensive. We later found out we literally got the last room in town. And it had a pool, and M had her swimming suit, and S had shorts and a tank top, so S and I went swimming (I wore M's suit).


S and I also walked over to the smiths (a few blocks away) and purchased a few staples of living-- bagels, yogurt, carrot sticks, and some dinner.


I called the mechanic first thing in the morning. (the previous evening at the parts shop, the guys had thrown around a few ideas for which shop to send us to, but these suggestions often ended with, "but it's a volvo, he won't touch those things.") He got me right in, knew a few things about Volvos, found the part, had it couriered down to Price from Orem, and got us on our way by 6pm Friday night. 


This left us 8 hours in Price Utah (it was around 9 when we went to the mechanic's). When we asked people what to do for that time they all laughed at us and told us to go to the Dinosaur Museum. (Which we went to the lobby of, and decided we weren't up for all that reading, so we went and took a nap in the Peace 'garden' instead). 


Luckily for us, Price is a VERY small town, so everything's within walking distance. Knowing we had all day, we decided to go to the DI and see what treasures we could find. We wandered for a while, seeing some cool/strange stuff, and S found a battery powered alarm clock for her trip to Europe. 


As we were checking out, I asked the clerk what there was to do in Price, she mentioned the Museum and we said we were down from BYU and had had car troubles and had all day. A couple in line behind us (they were the only other people in the store) piped up and said "There's a Friday forum at the institute and we're having a General Authority come, you could come to that" When we asked directions, they introduced themselves and offered us a ride up to the College of Eastern Utah (yes, Price has a college). 


As we were walking toward the institute building, we saw the institute director, and a few other men in suits walking towards it as well. Our friend Pete (the one we met at DI, I forget his wife's name) introduced us to then institute director and then one of the suited men looked up and said "Malia?" And then Malia said "Bishop?" and Shelly said "Bishop?". Turns out, in this small, small, small, Mormon world, the Shelly and Malia's bishop from Snow College is now the executive secretary to Elder Wheeler of the 5th quorum of the 70. It was such a random coincidence, or not a coincidence at all. 


We went to the forum, and it was great-- we learned about the church's new young single adult ward organization protocol, and some other very pertinent things to us. It was good for us to be there. 


Finding ourselves on a college campus, we decided to look around. We found a large TV where we finished our bagels. (They were the cinnamon crunch bagels from Smiths... easily my very favorite bagel I've ever had, they will change your life.)


We checked out the bookstore, which was so weird! I know it is a small school (2,173 students), especially compared to the monstrosity that is BYU (32,955 students), but it was so tiny! They only had one employee working! I think it would have been a really fun place to grow go to the first 2 years of college. Had we been stuck in Price another night, I would have pushed to attend the Eagle Frenzy and I could have become a true eagle (I over heard something about standing on a rock and doing something with your lips... and getting a t-shirt!) I would have done it too! 


So we spent the rest of the day wandering around town, they have a few shops, and we didn't even have to resort to Walmart... (Also I spent zero money during the day... knowing how much my repair bill was going to be). 


We could not have ordered a more perfect day to be on foot. No rain, few clouds, but not too hot. It was gorgeous (even if we did get a little sunburned)


Around 5:30 we were beat, walking all day in the sun. So we headed back to the mechanic to see if Betsy was done. She wasn't, but the man had promised me that he'd get us out of town by 6, so we waited patiently if not a little haggard, till she drove out front. It was the happiest thing I've ever seen-- I do love my car. 


So I paid for the repairs (I am now short one arm and one leg), and we were on our way! We were pretty spent when we got to M's house, her mom had chicken salad (full of delicious veggies) and a vegetable bean soup waiting for us, and we scarfed it down (or at least I wanted to, I tried my best to hold back and be polite!) We finalized arrangements for tomorrow, and turned on a movie (that I watched maybe 20 minutes of before I crashed)


Then I woke up at quarter to 7... bright eyed and bushy tailed. So far I have been super productive this morning. 
I read my scriptures.
Studied for my final on Monday.
Listed my car for sale on KSL and Craigslist. 
Started formatting my lesson for Sunday. 
And checked my bank statements. 
And blogged about my ridiculous Friday/Saturday. 


And it's not even 9:30 yet!


Hopefully all this going wrong before means that today will go PERFECTLY! 


(*crosses fingers*)