Brighten Your Day

My wife (fiancee at the time) and I were taking a trip from Charlotte to Hot Springs, NC for a little cabin, hot tub, ski time. I had a 2006 Mazda 6 that I had been driving for about 3 years at the time.

It was a sunny Friday midday when we made it close to Asheville and I started hearing a thump from my car. "Is that dirt or mud?" inquired my wife, but considering we had been on the highway for 2 hours without hitting as much as a clod, I knew it had to be something else. It only took a few seconds to realize it was under the hood and probably something knocked loose.

We pulled over on a random nearby turn and I cracked the hood open and realized my serpentine belt was absolutely shredded. An oil leak had deteriorated the belt and left us stranded on the side of the road.

It wasn't 5 minutes before a gentleman named Steve stopped and offered help, and it was quite a lot of help to give to a stranger. He drove me to a nearby auto parts store that had a belt and back to the car so we could get it on.

If you're familiar with changing a serpentine belt, it's not a tool-less job unless you're a monster, and to make matters worse, the old belt was shredded in the pulleys and wrapped everywhere. It took about 30 seconds of effort to realize it wasn't gonna happen with the two of us working on it and I had to call for a mobile mechanic.

I got to chitchatting with Steve for a minute and this selfless man offered to let two complete strangers borrow his spare vehicle for a day so we could continue our trip. We exchanged phone numbers and I let him snap a pic of my ID in case he felt like he needed it.

To wrap the story up so I'm not typing all morning, wife and I were able to make it to the cabin and the mobile mechanic came out to my car and repaired it later that day. Steve let us use his car all day Saturday and we swapped it back that night.

Sometimes I forget how nice people can be, but this man did not have to stop, did not have to take me to the shop, did not have to help work on the car, and did not have to let a stranger take his spare vehicle into the mountains for more than a day. But he was kind.