Judy is so good

 

I took her on some unpaved roads out in agricultural land Sunday to go look for a mountain bluebird that has been reported there.  Sometimes when we get out on dirt roads she gets a little antsy about getting stuck.  I drive on dirt roads all the time with no trouble, but sometimes when I’m driving with Judy I turn around way before we really need to so Judy won’t be uncomfortable.

 

So, we turn left onto the unpaved road and we can see it has rained recently.  The road isn’t too wet to drive on; just a few puddles that are easy to drive around or even drive through.  Judy was so good, she didn’t say a word.  She might have gripped the armrest a little tighter, but no complaints.  The road was a piece of cake.  It was at least five minutes, maybe even ten minutes into the unpaved road drive before I suddenly stopped the car, realizing we were screwed; totally stuck.  It was subtle, but it was real.

 

The smooth flat road was suddenly slippery as ice.  The mud was only a few inches deep, but it was clay and we’d strayed into a soft wet patch.  If the road hadn’t been flat, we’d have slid right off the side.  So there we were about three car-lengths in, in a straight line.  I put the car in reverse.  The wheels spun, but the car went nowhere.  I shut it off.  We weren’t in any danger of sinking deeper, we just couldn’t move.  We got out and assessed the situation, getting taller with every step as the sticky clay mud stuck to our shoes.

 

There was no help at hand.  If we were in the Jeep, we could have shifted to four-wheel drive, put it in reverse, backed out, and headed home.  No such luck.  Front-wheel drive minivan.  We had a clear path out in reverse, but no traction to get us started in that direction.  We needed purchase for the front wheels.

 

Nothing dry on the ground.  No sticks.  No leaves.  No dry dirt.  No sand.  No bits of driftwood or flotsam we could throw under the wheels.  We continued to get taller as we cast about, searching for a solution.  Suddenly inspiration struck.  Grocery bags.  Cloth grocery bags in the back of the minivan.  We scooped out the mud as best we could from behind the front wheels where it had built up when we tried to go backwards.  I stuffed a grocery bag behind each.  I used one of Judy’s hiking sticks to jam the bags in a little further so the wheels spinning in reverse would catch them.  Judy pushed from the front.  I finessed the throttle.  We moved an inch then stopped.

 

The bags that had helped us move were now jammed up under the wheels and preventing us from making it any farther.  But we had moved an inch.  There was hope!  Back into the mud to get the grocery bags pulled out as much as possible and aligned behind the front wheels again.  Another effort; Judy pushing, me at the wheel.  We moved again and kept moving.  Now my challenge was to keep the car moving, while Judy was pushing, but not moving so much that I outran Judy and dropped her on her face in the mud.

 

Mission accomplished.  We backed all the way out of the mud, and a little bit further, just to be sure.  We couldn’t really clean the mud off ourselves, there wasn’t anything left inside the car to clean with, and nothing to scrape against on the side of the road, so we piled our muddy selves back in and left.  We drove to a quarter car wash in Mercedes.  First we blew the mud off our shoes with the car wash wand so we could see them again, then washed off the car as best we could.  We and the car were much better when we left.  The car wash bay was a mess.

 

We went on to Estero Llano Grande State Park and walked off more of the mud as it dried, then spent the rest of the afternoon congratulating ourselves on getting out of a tough situation (rather than beating one of us up for getting us into it in the first place).

 

Like I said.  Judy is so good.