Blessed!

I had a wonderful weekend in the Capital City with our daughter and oldest granddaughter. We shopped, baked bread and bagels together and I began my very first needlepoint project. It was all so much fun! I left yesterday morning with a happy heart and sweet memories of time spent together to head back home, all went well until I entered a section of Interstate Highway that's a current construction zone. With about 80+ miles to go I was cruising along and all of a sudden I hit something in the roadway, there was a terrific “bang" and I immediately realized that I had a flat tire! Traveling at 65 mph, and being in the passing lane, I had to carefully work my way across two lanes of traffic to the safety of the side of the road beyond the breakdown lane, I wasn't sure at all how bad it was but,  needless to say, it was a stressful situation. I called roadside assistance (the most well known and trusted one that we've been members of for many years) and spent way too long navigating an automated call system before I could actually talk to a live human. Once she understood my situation I was transferred to the actual service dept. who communicated with me through a series of text messages, indicating that it might be 40-45 minutes before they could arrive. In the meantime, I exited my car as the high volume of cars and trucks whizzing beside me was nothing short of hair-raisingly scary. I called 911 and they contacted Highway Patrol who indicated that they would send someone to find me. I stood far away from the car, down an embankment, waiting... and waiting... and waiting. No one that I'd called was showing up.  And then, all of a sudden, one of the NCDOT trucks (stock photo, above) pulled up behind my car! He turned all of his flashing lights on and got out and placed cones in the breakdown lane around my car. I approached him, assuming the roadside assistance service sent him. He told me "no, this is a free service that the state provides; your tax dollars at work" he said. He pronounced my tire as "shredded" and helped me to get out the spare, changed the tire and told me that I was good to go. He wouldn't even take a tip but gave me a survey to fill out. His name was Isaac and I told him that he was my hero! He said that he hears that a lot, he told me that he was actually my knight in a shining neon green safety vest!  All of this occurred and still no Highway Patrol or roadside assistance program anywhere in sight. I canceled the call into them and with Isaac's help was back on the road! I was lucky, I know that. Until yesterday, I had no idea about the North Carolina Department of Transportation Incident Management program. He told me to put *47 into my phone in case anything like this ever happened again. I did, and if you're reading this and live in North Carolina, I urge you to do so too. Isaac received a glowing review from me. Interestingly, I never heard back from our roadside assistance membership program; I would have thought they would circle back after I canceled them, but nope. Today I am counting my blessings, I have four brand new tires on my car and a grateful heart for my roadside hero who happened by at exactly the right time. 

Life is Good!