Sometimes in life you may be heading down one path, but fate has other plans. Last night my friends and I were all heading to Dwelling Place, the college service at Antioch Community Church. I was driving all of us in my car when the check engine light came on; I figured that it wasn’t a big deal and that I would take care of it later. We made a quick stop at UPS so that I could mail off a package; however, when I started the car again it began to shake and it smelled like smoking rubber. Definitely not a good sign!

I parked the car and popped the hood to take a look. Unfortunately, none of my friends in the car knew any more about cars than I did. So, being a naïve college freshman and not knowing what else to do, I called my dad for help. My dad attempted to direct me through checking the engine and fan belt. After teaching me where the fan belt was, my dad was able to diagnose the problem. One of the coils had come undone and I needed to get my car to a shop or dealership.

Here I am trying to stay positive in the middle of the car diagnosis process!

Luckily the Toyota dealership is only two miles away from where we were. My friend Brittany was able to drive over and pick my friends up and she followed me to the dealership. I was able to safely drive there and it seemed like that would be the end of our problems for the night. However, once we arrived at the dealership we found out it was closed! Being my usual optimistic self, I hoped that someone would be there working late who would be able to help us. So we parked the car outside of the gate and hopped the fence to walk through the lot and over to the office part of the dealership. I knocked on the windows but the only people who were still there was the cleaning service. They said there was nothing they could do and I would have to find somewhere to park my car until morning when Toyota opened. Fortunately, there was an open parking lot next to the dealership that I was able to park in and leave my car until morning.

Of course the only way to end such an eventful night is to get frozen yogurt at U-Swirl. On Wednesdays at U-Swirl you can guess the weight of your yogurt and if you get it right then you get it for free! And just my luck I correctly guessed the weight of my yogurt. Free frozen yogurt quickly turned my night around! Through this experience I learned that it is important to understand that parts of the car and know their basic functions. Maybe next time I will be more prepared.