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About five years ago, my youngest daughter, Amy, and I attended the wedding of one my co-workers. It was held at a beautiful rural area of southwest Washington, about 30 minutes from where we lived. The wedding was lovely and after the reception, my daughter and I set off to go home. I knew how I got there, so I was going to return home the same way I came. One of the other guests told me that I could get home much quicker, if I just took the "back way" and not go all the way out to the freeway.

The directions sounded simple enough, so I decided to be adventurous and take the shortcut. It was still daylight when we started for home, and I thought the scenic "shortcut" was just beautiful. I kept on driving and driving, and suddenly the "shortcut" didn't seem so short at all. In fact, we seemed to be climbing higher and higher in a mountainous region I was totally unfamiliar with. I was starting to get very nervous as this "back way" was not producing any signs of life, houses, or other traffic. It was then that I began to think that I should have turned left where I had turned right. I was seriously considering turning around when, all of a sudden, my vehicle started to thump and bump and vibrate! I pulled to the side of the rocky dirt road that had recently morphed from a smooth paved one.

I got out of the car to inspect the situation and discovered a completely flat tire. By this time, the sun had set and the daylight was almost gone. Where we had once been surrounded by a lively bunch of people, service stations, and grocery stores, we were now in the middle of nowhere, literally. My cell phone was getting no service, so I couldn't call for roadside assistance. My daughter got out of the car and optimistically declared that "we" could change the tire ourselves. I got out the jack and the spare tire. The lugnuts must have been rusted because neither one of us could budge them to get the flat tire off the car. By now, it was very dark. We were so high up, it seemed like you could reach out and touch the stars. It was beautiful, but both of us were starting to get scared. Two women stuck in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight.

All of a sudden we heard some whooping and hollering, and we could see a pickup truck full of teenagers turning down a road about a quarter of a mile away from us. The key word being "away" from us! My daughter started jumping up and down and waving her arms and yelling, but they didn't notice and soon they disappeared. It became

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