It was a hot summer day, I believe to be in late July or early August. It was two days before my family was going on vacation, we were all getting our belongings situated and all ready to go. Joey, Kaila, Ella, Jaylee, Ma and I were heading home from Walmart, where we just picked up some last minute necessities, I was all sweaty because I just played in a soccer game in Amherst. My dad didn’t come because he was going four wheeling with a couple of his friends on the reservation. My dad calls Ma while we’re on our way home, he tells her that we need to get home quick because his wheel fell off his four wheeler in the woods, he needed help to fix it so he could bring it home. He couldn’t just leave it there, we were going on vacation soon, it would’ve stayed there for two weeks if we didn’t get it tonight. It’s around 10 at night by time we get home, I really didn’t want to go, I just played in a game and I was tired. I didn’t bother arguing about it, I go and get changed and we’re on our way, just my dad and I. I wasn’t sure how long it would take us, figured it’d be an easy fix and that we’d be on our way back home in an hour, hour and half at tops. Well we got to the site where his wheel fell off, it was maybe a mile in the middle of nowhere. It was worse than I thought, the wheel was nearly ruined and the lugnuts were missing from that wheel, the other lug nuts from the other wheels were all stripped. We had to find a way to take all the lug nuts off, distribute them all equally to all four wheels. We took all the lugnuts off and we only had about eight good lug nuts, and four wheels. That’s only two lug nuts per wheel, when they’re supposed to have four. And we had to go a mile of hilly, muddy, rocky woods. There was no way we were gonna make it back in a hour. We tried different combinations, we tried pushing it up the hills, and lifting it over certain things, which was a bad idea considering it weighs like 800 pounds. It was always the same wheel that kept falling off, the back left, so we ended up going to my grandma’s at one in the morning and picking up a spare wheel she had.

Surprisingly her huge german shepherd was nowhere to be seen, good guard dog. We stole her wheel, drove back to the road, I hauled the wheel back to the crash site, we put it on, everything was fine. We went a solid 40 feet before suddenly the front right tire popped off. We put it back on, added a lug nut from the back left. We went another 40 feet, the back right fell off. After a few choice words and a lot of standing there staring into the darkness, we put it back on, it was alright again. We went farther and farther and guess what, next the front left popped off. Every single wheel has now came off. So we ended up taking all of the wheels off (besides the one we went and went got from my grandma’s) and carried them a mile through the muddy, hilly, rocky woods back to the car. We drove to my grandma’s, stole another three tires and drove back to the site, carried the tires back another mile to the four wheeler and then put them on. We had four new wheels, two lug nuts per wheel, and we had to go a mile. Well it ended up working, somehow we didn’t have any problems the entire mile. Well my dad didn’t at least, he was the one driving. I was left to carry the two rear tires (rear tires are a lot thicker and heavier than front tires) back once again a mile through the pitch dark to the car. Despite all the hard work and anger that came with the million of problems thrown at us that night, I enjoyed it. I’d rather have been doing that than sleeping in bed. It was so peaceful, so quiet and dark, you could hear everything, and once your eyes got adjusted to the dark, you could see everything too. You know those sections in the woods, where the woods are cleared to make a lane for power lines? Well our car was parked in one of those paths, and then the four wheeler was about a mile deep into the woods on the side of the electrical path. I remember taking a break once we got to the car, once everything was settled, tires put away, tools in the car, four wheeler turned off and on the trailer. My dad and I stopped and paused and just heard the power lines, that’s how peaceful and quiet it was, you could hear the electric flowing through the cables. Ever heard of the saying “as happy as a boy’s first time helping with a man’s job”, well I suppose that’s what you could consider it, because it did make me happy, even though I didn’t get home until 5 am and I probably walked a solid eight miles carrying heavy tires, I’d say it was worth it.