I had the “unfortunate” opportunity to join an illustrious club this summer. A special shout out to the senior members out there! I joined the “blow- your-trailer-tire-club.”

My family and I were making the annual trek out to Bear Creek Provincial Park up the Coquihalla highway with our tent trailer and 2006 Nissan Quest minivan. The van is getting on in years and I always worry about its ability to make the many long and steep climbs on the way to Kelowna (Replacing that van seems impossible…seriously pick-up trucks are so expensive!). We left early to avoid the midday heat and we were slowly making our way up one of the many hills and then we heard…BANG!

Not A Good Sound

I knew exactly what that meant. Being up a hill on the Coquihalla highway is far from an ideal location for this to happen (is there even such a thing as an ideal location to blow a trailer tire?).

I learned a few important things along the way (besides that I should consider auditing some of our mechanics classes soon):

  1. Location, location, location. God was indeed with me and my family. Our tire blew just as the highway merged from three lanes down to two. Since there was no shoulder, I found a relatively safe place to stop. The passenger side tire blew on the tent trailer, so I was able to change the tire away from traffic, and not right beside massive semi-trucks and cars flying up the hills. We were going slowly up hill, and not down hill so I was able to keep full control of the van and trailer.
  2. Common sense. Not everything I learned was divine; some of it was common sense. Here are a few (probably obvious to some) pointers:
    1. Don’t pack the jack at the bottom of the van under all your camping gear. I spent just as much time unpacking and repacking the van to get to the jack and tire iron as I did changing the tire.
    2. Check the air in the spare trailer tire (I guess this applies to the van too…shoot! I should check that when I get home!). I got the tire on, but the spare tire was totally flat. Guess who didn’t have a portable compressor?
  3. Technology can’t save you. Of course, one of my first plans was to call our friends who were coming up behind us and ask for help, but we were in a cellphone dead zone. Technology only seems to work until you actually need it.

With the flat tire now on the trailer, and the van repacked I was able to slowly drive the 800m to a near by exit and pulled off the highway.

Now what!?

Do I disconnect the trailer, leave it here and drive to Merritt and get a compressor? My kids don’t travel well, so I was imagining what this was all going to look like. I got out of the van to double check the flat tire and come up with a plan.

Then I heard chainsaws up in the forest. A forestry crew was nearby!

I walked down the road and thankfully found a forestry service pick-up truck with someone sitting in it doing paperwork. I asked if he had a compressor and after a good 15 minutes of sorting through his truck, he found one for me. I inflated my flat spare tire and we were ready to continue our journey.

Seeing God at Work

I’ve held on and reflected on this story a few times this year. It was a reminder of past times in my life when I had to rely on God for direction, protection, and providence. Even in the last few weeks at school I’ve seen God’s hand work and move in real and tangible ways.

I hope that by me joining this illustrious club over the summer will spark some reminders of times in your life when God was active in tangible ways. God is still active in our daily lives and in tangible ways. He keeps reminding me of this and it’s my prayer that you’ll be able to see that too.