that time I broke down on the interstate.

Sunday started out like a normal, hungover Sunday. (Not really normal. I want to be clear that I rarely ever drink. I only drink with friends [so socially] and family.) I was visiting friends in Edinboro Saturday night, and on my way home.

I was maybe 20-30 minutes outside of Edinboro, and as illustrated by my map you can see by location where it all went down.

Google Maps & my illustrations

First, a pebble hit my windshield. Then 5 seconds later, my tires were rumbling like I had a flat tire. Great. So I put my turn signal on to go to the side of the road (luckily I was already in the right lane) and as I'm pulling off, I hear a sound that in my mind, sounded like my brake pads fell off and got caught up in my tires. Freaking amazing. I was going to be fine with the fact that I may have had to change a tire in 25-30 degree weather, but now this? What the heck was this sound?

As I put my car in park, put my four-ways and emergency brake on... I let my foot off the brake. And my car started drifting forward. So okay, cool. Now I really have no brakes at all. I was next to a guard rail, so in the moment I decided to MacGyver my car diagonally (still on the shoulder of the road) so that I wouldn't drift forward and go into the ditch.

I then get out to survey the damage. NOTHING. Nothing externally, to the eye, was wrong. COOL. Then, I decide to call my parents. Since I still live at home, I'm still on their AAA coverage and car insurance, so of course I have to let them know. They tell me to wait where I am, call the friends I was staying with to see if they could wait with me until AAA and they (my parents) could come.

In the meantime of waiting, a very nice guy (probably early to mid 30's) pulled over in front of me and got out asking if I needed help. I told him no, that AAA was on their way. He got back into his car, then got back out and asked if he could try to move my car towards the opening between the two guardrails, so I wasn't directly on the road. Because he wasn't threatening, I let him.* But no avail. My car grinded going in and out of park. And no movement when he put his foot on the gas.

As I was waiting for help, of course I had to Insta!

About 10 minutes later, as I was waiting for AAA, my wonderful friend Kayla and my parents, I see in my rear view mirror a State Police officer with his lights on heading towards me. And normally, that would make me poo my pants. But this time he was coming to help. I'm pretty sure the nice guy who tried to help me called the state police to try and help me further. The officer was great and put up some flares and told me to call 911 if I have any further problems.

Eventually AAA got there, told us to drive to the next exit and wait for him. Once he got there, I signed paperwork on where to send my car to (my Uncle has a auto shop and he was amazing and fixed baby car for me yesterday!). About 2 minutes later, my parents got there. And I felt less stressed.


Needless to say, Sunday was one of the most nerve racking days of my life. What can we learn from this? Try to not drive a 12 year old car and have really good AAA coverage.


*Trust me, the whole time I thought he was a psycho serial killer who was going to rape me in broad daylight. But he didn't. And I'm grateful for him stopping, it restored my faith in humanity.