Here's the problem: I've never been to IKEA. 

Here's the solution my friend Ben came up with: Spontaneous roadtrip to the nearest IKEA.

And now, here's the story:

The plan was to leave Lethbridge bright and early at 9:00. After baking some muffins (banana chocolate chip) and mixing up some steamed milk (cinnamon dolce) and syncing my ipod with lots and lots of awesome tunes, I headed over to Ben's and we loaded our stuff into the car.

The weather, despite warnings of more fires and other fun stuff, was actually pretty good! It was sunny for the whole trip, minus the five minute patch of drizzly rain, and the wind wasn't TOO horrible. That was what we were really concerned about anyway. Good ol' Southern Alberta wind. Yesterday, it was so windy that semis were being blown off the highway. We made it a game to count their carcasses in the ditches and pretended not to be nervous. 

And then we heard a funny sound.

Both of us furrowed our brows and looked at each other. "Do you want to pull over and check?" I asked. "Yeah, I think I will". As far as our extensive knowledge of cars could tell, we couldn't see anything wrong with the car. So we hopped back in and decided to go a little slower and see if that helped. It didn't really. Whenever the car shifted, the noise would come back.

And then we noticed something else.

The coolant gauge was getting awfully close to the red danger zone. I wasn't 100% sure what that meant, but it probably would have blown us up. Probably. We pulled over again. While Ben called his dad to see what we should do, I googled the problem. (Yes, I KNOW...) We lifted the hood of the car and decided to see if that would cool it off a bit. After ten minutes, we tried to go again. The coolant started to get really hot again, and once again we pulled over. This time, we carefully unscrewed the cap to the tank and poured in the entire contents of Ben's water bottle. We let it cool down again, and then started the car. After two minutes of driving, the temperature was back up, so we stopped. This pattern continued for quite some time. 

And then the battery light went on. And the "Service Engine Soon" light.

Both of us were slightly panicked and were desperately flipping through the car manual and texting every male relative we knew. By this point, we were inching the car along the shoulder, praying like mad that we could at least make it to the next town. The temperature got really hot again, so we stopped. Only this time when we went to turn it on again, the car wouldn't start. 

Little Sadie Saturn was as dead as a doornail.

The cars beside us drove on, not stopping or even slowing down. We even counted FOUR police cars that passed us. Way to be lame, guys. Ben and I sat in the car, not really saying anything. I could tell he was trying really hard not to look it, but he was worried. A lot. As the cars on the highway drove past us, it was hard not to be a little discouraged. I tried to distract myself by flipping through the ipod we had plugged in. Suddenly, I stopped. Turning to Ben I said, "I found the perfect song..." with a mischievous grin. Ben cocked his head quizzically trying to figure what on earth was playing through the speakers, and, finally understanding, we simultaneously screamed at the top of our lungs,

"ALL BY MYSEEEEEEEEEEEELF! DON'T WANNA BE. ALL BY MYSEEEEEEEEEEEEELF!"

We lost it. In a matter of seconds, we went from nearly sobbing to nearly peeing ourselves laughing. We sang loud, we sang off-key, but sing we did, and after that our situation seemed a lot more funny. Even though we were stranded on the side of the road like 1 km from the next town and the garage was on a five million hour long lunch break and they didn't have a tow truck and we weren't even sure if we'd make it back to Lethbridge, we laughed. From that point on, neither of us were really worried. We sat in the car, listening to music, looking through my IKEA catalogue, and chatting, and seriously, I enjoyed every minute of it!

Now, we did eventually get towed to the garage, and we did eventually get back home (Thanks Mr. Toner!), but that is not the important part of this story. What is really important is what I learned from it:

1. No matter how hard you pray and how much faith you have, sometimes God still doesn't respond the way you want. And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. When we left Lethbridge, I actually said a prayer that the car would function properly and we would be able to make it to Calgary safely. HA. Well, apparently Heavenly Father had other plans! It didn't mean that He loved us any less or that we had done something wrong, it just meant that God wanted us to learn something from this trip other than how to compare prices on lamps and upholstery.

2. I know next to nothing about cars. Seriously. I should probably get around to learning sometime...

3. Be Prepared. This is not an endorsement for Boy Scouts (If you want your son enrolled and you live in Melfort, contact Perry Froc at 752-2...), but seriously. There's a scripture that says, "And if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." Part of the reason I didn't freak out and start crying is because I've been taught growing up how to stay calm in emergency situations. Also, I'm really glad that we both had bottles of water with us, or we wouldn't have made it as far as we did. We also had a bat and a Swiss-army bottle opener in the car, so if we had to club someone or take up drinking, we would have been set.

4. Facing problems is so much easier with someone else. I was glad that no one was alone driving that car, because if it had broken down and there had been no one around that would have REALLY sucked. But when I think about the bigger picture, I realize this is also true for every other problem we have to face. It's always easier when you let others help with your problems. In fact, they're always worse when I try to tackle them on my own.

5. No matter how scary things get, you can always find something to be happy about. This was a monumentally big breakthrough thought for me guys. Like, let's take a moment to appreciate that. Okay? Good. Let me emphasize again just how scared we were on the side of that road with no one to help us. And yet, it was one of our favourite adventures that we've ever had. We were still able to laugh it off, and we were still able to have fun, regardless of whether or not we made it to our destination.

It's been a long day. I think I'mma head to bed! 

You can read about today's adventure from Ben's point of view here.