prayers and paperclips!

Yes, that's how we made it to Utah, driving an old car out to Philip (Carl had worked on the car all summer). In an obscure little town (Quanta?) in the Texas panhandle, we broke down. I was at the wheel, preparing to stop at a red light. When my foot reached for the clutch pedal, there was none! So I just had to brake it (clunk, clunk, clunk!). Carl thought I'd forgotten how to drive a stick shift.

The clutch pedal was lying useless, flat on the floor of the car. The pin which secured it in place, was missing. After several hundred miles, it just fell apart. While Carl was examining the situation, I stood in back of the car directing traffic. It was empowering in a weird way to be directing the traffic around us. Truck drivers sure are nice. Two of them stopped to offer assistance. Carl, who has the ability to fix just about anything, asked me if I had a paperclip. Of course I did. And that's how we made it the rest of way to Utah, with a prayer and a paperclip. The little red paperclip, which I used to mark my place in my reading material, was used to fasten the clutch pedal onto the pedal holder.

Early the following morning, the city of Albuquerque lost electric power. In the middle of taking a shower in the hotel room, we were plunged in darkness, and had to fumble around to get ready. Then, as we were driving past Gallup, snow showers started. At one point, we got caught in about 20 minutes of a mini- blizzard where we had almost zero visibility. This picture is the calm before the storm. It was unusual to see snow in Gallup in October. (There was none in Utah.)

No snow or ice on the mountain roads into Utah. We breathed a big sigh of relief when the car made it to Provo .

Jeremy and Philip took us for a drive on the Alpine Loop.

Jeremy put the final touches on his Halloween costume in the engineering lab.

BYU students dressed for Halloween for classes on Friday. Jeremy with unknown student.This was one of my favorites on the BYU campus. (from the movie "Up")

We attended a Tabernacle Choir rehearsal. The ambassador to Spain sat in front of us (far left).

While Andy and Jeremy ran the Skyline trail in Orem, training for future marathons, Carl and I walked it.

We visited with sister Beverly and her family in Layton. I asked Beverly to model the hat she made as part of the beautiful costume, which she also made, for a local Halloween festival.