So some friends of mine and I went down to Cedar City to do some climbing and for JD and Craig's (fore mentioned friends) Polo tournament on Friday/Saturday. We left Thursday morning and made record down to Cedar. Upon arrival we left civilization and took to the hills. I was driving my little 3'' clearance mercury Sable but JD's guidebook said that a high clearance vehicle was not required. We got off onto a dirt road that started OK and got steadily more ruff. At one point I should have turned around but to my bank account's dismay I did not. Soon I told JD and Craig to get out and guide more or less to lessen the weight in the car for the extra .0005'' but oh well it was a good thing because shortly after they began guiding JD noticed a trail of dripping behind the car. I got out and smelt it, turned out it was gasoline and my tank was punctured. We tried shoving numerous things into it like sticks and small rocks but nothing would stay, it was very small but there was a hairline crack about an inch long that made it so even a well stuck stick would not help. Inspiration hit me GUM! and gum it was that held enough gas in the tank for the trip back to civilization and thats just the beginning. When we got the estimate for the car we were in trouble 300 was more than all three of us combined had on us but luckily there was a Zions Bank right next door the mechanic. After removing everything from my account down to $0.00 (not to mention a very strange look from the bank lady - probably due to my gasoline smell and very dirty look) we found that we had just enough money to get the car fixed and filled up just enough to get home. We then learned the city quite well because we had nothing else to do other than roam toting our sleeping bags in our hand and as much food and supplies we could get out of the car and stuff into our small backpacks before we left it in the hands of the mechanic (food was not large in quantity/quality because we had planned to buy sandwich makings while down there). Our first order of business in our roaming was to find a place to spend the night. Luckily just about 6 blocks down and over the free way was a well fenced in church with a pavilion. We knew that you are not supposed to stay in church parking lots and such but we figured if anyone stopped us we'd ask if we could stay with them.
Next we looked for the pool in which they would play in their tournament the next night (Friday) and we would be saved with food and a place to stay. It was not hard to find because we had been down there twice before for swim meets and knew its general area. We stayed out sorta late so we would not be seen coming into the pavilion at the church, laid out our sleeping bags and slept (sorta cold due to the concrete slabs we slept on's ability to hold its cold temperature under us). In the morning I went to check on the car only to find out that the tires that we thought about replacing before the trip needed replacing NOW. To make the long story short (too late) I had to call Mom and Dad and get their credit card over the phone for the tires which they were going to pay for anyway but only did the front two before the trip. Anyway we stayed with the water polo team that night at a competitors home who happened to be a farmer so we had fresh from the cow chilled milk (not bad actually) and a great breakfast unlike the morning before of a couple nutrigrain bars). In the end we did make it home.
