CROP CIRCLES AND FLYING WHEELS

Greetings!

Have you ever wondered if you have a guardian angel? I personally have no doubt, and he was really working my case today. 

I took a drive shaft from my store room and delivered it to Doug @ Driveline Service in Yakima, about a 30 minute drive down the freeway from my home. I need to have it shortened to fit Gary's '51 Chevy coupe. On the way there I noticed a patterned, pulsing noise from the front end of Tammy's Pacifica. I took a minute in Doug's parking lot to run my hands over the tires, expecting to find a blemish that could be causing the anomaly. Nothing. So, I continued with my errands but stopped again while at Costco to check the tires once more. I didn't think to check the lug nuts, I had just had the right front tire serviced but they're real good about torquing the nuts. 

I remember passing a semi truck carrying a huge wide load followed by a pilot car and feeling the pulsing through the steering wheel as I whizzed by them. A couple of miles later I left the freeway and continued on the state highway toward my home. Suddenly, less than 5 miles from home, the front wheel passed me on the right and bounced up over a fence into a farmer's cultivated field and I slid to a controlled stop on the gravel shoulder about a hundred yards from a dangerous rural intersection.

I got out to survey the damage and recover my truant front wheel/tire from the field. As I walked back to my crash site I saw a bearded young man approaching my car. He stopped and looked closely at the damaged hub and then stood there waiting for me to return. He spoke very softly and without animation, telling me that I would have to knock out all the damaged studs and replace them. I knew that and told him so. Then he said that I would need a spacer to help me pull the new studs through the hub and to make sure that they went on straight the first time. Then, he said that he was a certified mechanic and had done this task before. I thanked him, locked the car and started walking toward home, calling Tammy to come get me just before my phone battery died. 

I called around to the parts stores looking for 5 new wheel studs and lug nuts - all mine were in the bushes. One of the local stores that was open after 5pm had 5 in stock. But only 5. I gathered some tools from the shop and went back to the car with my newly-acquired 1 ton Chevy utility truck that conveniently has overhead amber warning lights. I parked the truck behind the Pacifica with the overheads flashing and an hour later, as night descended, the repair was complete. 

Tammy & I remarked that some of the circumstances of the accident were strangely coincidental:

• Why didn't the studs fail when she was following me home while I drove the 1 ton back from Vancouver Washington last Friday in the dark.
• Why did it fail when I was the only passenger in the car?
• Why was it on the stretch of straight highway safely ahead of the dangerous intersection and not 3 minutes earlier as I passed the wide load at 75mph?
• Why did only one parts store have just 5 stud sets?
• Why did it happen 3 days after I bring home a big heavy truck with overhead warning lights?
•  Why did it happen in front of the young mechanic's house, who was out for a walk along the highway at twilight for no apparent reason?
• And finally, what was the meaning of the alien crop circles in the field where my tire/wheel landed?

Could it be that I have some special mission to accomplish in mortality that still awaits me? Or, is it merely that the Good Lord is struggling to find a suitable location for me? Which ever it is, I'm grateful that things turned out so well after such an unfortunate incident. Let me remind each of you to be sure to take your vehicle to a trusted source when you hear a strange noise or feel an unusual vibration in the steering wheel or elsewhere, and know that none of us will be taken before our time.

Doug