The other day while I was out looking for a house that my GPS couldn’t find, because my wife wants to settle, and a happy wife is a happy life like it is said, I managed to get myself well and truly stuck.
We aren’t talking a little bit stuck either.
We’re talking 100 per cent, front-end-sinking-in-the-mud kind of stuck.
Now, I’ve had all sorts of adventures with my vehicles since I first got my licence, and I’ve even been stuck once or twice before, so I knew the risks of travelling down that road well enough, but I was still not prepared to get into that kind of a mess.
For a moment, I want you to imagine how hilarious I must have looked standing in that field in my socks, stamping my feet furiously at my bad luck, all covered in mud.
I bet I looked pretty stupid hey?
Somewhere between wasting a box of kitty litter in a futile attempt to gain traction, slogging around in the muck and having to periodically step back to assess my clear lack of progress, I managed to lose one of my shoes in the fight and that was in the first five minutes.
For the next hour I fought with the mud, wrestling my car closer to drier ground.
I’d driven down one part of the road already and it was far, far wetter its entire length, so seeing how dry the ground looked the other way, naturally I assumed it would be passable. I imagine to a passerby I looked like some kind of a city slicker or something, because clearly I didn’t think my whole plan through. I mean, what was I thinking, driving a car down an unpaved rural county road just after the snow melts?
I think that’s what really galls me, the knowledge that I should have known better.
It certainly isn’t the driver who passed by my wife and I, liberally spraying us both with mud and water without so much as a smile or a wave, the driver who could have slowed down and spared my wife the onslaught from their tires but did not, nor is it the fact I lost a shoe to the mud’s grip, but these things play their part in my discomfort too.
I could have done without getting stuck in the mud and having to wear so much of it home, especially on Easter, but it was not a total loss.
I did get to explore some far-flung areas after all.
To the gentleman with the red pickup who gave me as much assistance as they were able: while we weren’t successful in getting me entirely out of the mud at that point, it was a real improvement to the situation. I never got your name, but if you read this, thanks for taking the time to help a stranger.
Next time I decide to chase down a lead I’ll bring the SUV instead.
