wedding road trip

Day 13: Where Ford Art Thou?

After hanging out with Chad and Kristine, Chris and I spent part of the drive to Austin talking about coincidence versus pre-destination. Last night, Chad told us a story of a sequence of events that he believes was too synchronistic to be just a series of coincidences. He maintains that God often makes things happen in his/our lives. My cousin also holds the same belief about several serendipitous occasions in her own journey through life. While I’m not sure where I fall on the pre-destination versus coincidence spectrum, I do believe that things present themselves as needed- sort of a “the universe provides” philosophy.

Case in point… this afternoon, somewhere between Houston and Austin. We had just fattened Roxy up with some much needed gasoline when we noticed her odometer, which was hovering around five thousand miles. Having been raised by a father who spent quite a bit of time educating me on the relative merits of changing the oil in my old Ford Ranger, I told Chris that it was time to find a Ford dealer to grease Roxy up.

Now, keep in mind that we were in the middle of nowhere when the following conversation happened:

Jaime: I think we need to get Roxy’s oil changed. She seems a little thirsty.
Chris: I seriously doubt we’re going to find a Ford dealer anywhere near here. We’d better wait until Austin.
Jaime: I think we’ll find one.

At this point, I put the car in drive, pulled out of the gas station and drove up a nearby hill to find? You guessed it. A Ford dealer, with a Quick Lube station that was completely empty. We were in and out of the dealer in twenty minutes, with Roxy purring happily the rest of the way to Austin.

God or coincidence? You decide.

Tags: #forddrive, austin wedding road trip, day 13 austin texas, texas wedding road trip