After topping off the tank at the last station we'd see until the late evening, we piled into the Suburban and headed down the road. Three photographers on an adventure to explore the old Pony Express Trail through western Utah and into Nevada, most of it dirt. Just about the time we lost cell service we stopped to photograph sunflowers along the road and discovered our left rear tire was going flat. Just great! No problem though, we had a spare. The vehicle owner calmly took out the jack and began the process of changing the tire. Everything progressed until the lug nuts were off and we found he couldn't get the tire off of the hub. After fruitless tries to pull it off, the other one of our three-some picked up a rather large rock and offered it to the driver. A couple of swings and the tire broke loose allowing us to mount the spare. We were off and running. Of course we didn't have a spare now, but what are the odds of more than one flat in a day. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed photographing mustangs and beautiful scenery. We eventually crossed into Nevada where the road took us over the mountains into a beautiful and quite green valley below. We stopped again to take some photographs only to discover the spare tire we had put on the Suburban was going flat. Now we were in a pickle! We were just a few miles from the very small community of Ibapa, a town with little more than a church and an elementary school. We hobbled in to town and stopped at one of the first houses we found. We knocked on the door and explained our situation to the occupants and asked it they had a compressor, not that it would really solve our problem. An elderly gentleman lead us out to a small shed and pulled a his compressor out. It didn't work very well, but that didn't really matter because our leak was too large to ever hope of holding air for the 100 or so miles that remained on our journey. The man sent his 12 year old grandson who had join us into the house for a spray bottle of soapy water. The next thing you know the car was jacked up and the tire was off. He used the soapy water to identify the leak. Next he pulled out a tire repair kit and plugged the hole. It took a while, but the struggling compressor eventually filled the tire and we were on our way. But, not before asking the man if we could compensate him. He answered with a question, "are you Christian?" The answer was, "yes!" "On that case", he said, "you help someone else or if I need something you help me." In the crazy world we live in, when so many people seem to be at each other's throats, we can take solace in the fact that there are so many good people willing to help others. We can also thank God for the blessings he sends to us daily and all that we have. Here we had two flat tires in the middle of nowhere and the solutions were there. Considering the problems we encountered, it still turned out to be a great day and we made two new friends while we were at it! (The man also taught us the reason for our problem. My friend had road tires on the Suburban and that to be out on the dirt roads they didn't have the necessary number of plies to protect them from sharp rocks on the road. I obviously have been buying good tires because I've never had a problem, but my friends tires, while in good shape, we for paved roads only. So if you plan to spend time on dirt roads buy 10 ply tires with 4 plies on the sidewalls. That was the old man's advice and I believe him.)

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