HOW TO UNSTUCK A CAR FROM THE MUD

It was a Monday morning and I was getting ready to go to work, but life had other plans in
store for me, another “adventure”, as my boyfriend likes to call this kind of stuff. As he opened the
door to drive me, we found we had a private pond right outside our door, as a bad storm had hit
the area around 3 a.m.
I proceeded to panick, cause I needed to go to work, then, the realization that there was
no way to get there sank in, and there was nothing else to do than to go back to bed and cuddle, a
little later, Jim, my boyfriend, said he was getting hungry and wanted to go with me to get
breakfast, so I opened the door and see that to get to the car my feet would be under water and I
refused to get soaked. It was that kind of situation where nothing is wrong but we women
sometimes make things harder, I saw the opportunity and took it, I started an argument about
getting my feet wet and from there, everything sank, literally.

Jim, as the gentleman he is, moved the car so his princess wouldn´t get wet, after a 10
minute argument about why he shouldn´t do it, he mentioned we could get stuck in the mud, I
said “no way”…we got stuck (sorry, babe).

He tried, I tried, nothing was working, we were only making things worse. Jim got
frustrated and wasn´t happy about the whole situation, so I had to try and make things work,
although “I´m not a camper”, and I´ve repeated this phrase to him several times throughout our
relationship, I needed to save the day and make it up to him somehow.

First, I went to my good old friend Google and typed in “how to get a car unstuck from the
mud”. After my research, I went for the number one recommendation: Use your car´s mats to get
traction on the slippery surface. Didn´t work at all, I ended up covered in mud, I think Jim was
enjoying this part. Second recommendation: Use rocks to try to get the tires to grip on them. I
carried rocks like I was building a wall and strategically placed them under the tires, I was very
confident that this time we were going to make it. Didn´t work. So, I went ahead and tried the
third recommendation: Use branches. I went and collected and dragged branches and then placed
them under the tires and you guessed right, it didn´t work either. I was tired, hungry, up to my
ankles in mud and now worried cause nothing was working and more rain was on forecast.

This is how I got us out of the mess: I started turning the tires to the left, then attempting
to go back and forth, then to the right and so on, to try to make the holes where the tires were
buried in wider. Then, with more space, I rearranged some rocks right in front of the tires and got
a medium sized tree branch, which I placed also in front of the tires, on top of the rocks. I looked

at Jim, said “go” and just like that, we got unstuck. We couldn’t have breakfast, because we were
stuck for quite some time, but we had lunch.
Moral of the story: Do your research, get hands-on, persist and when your man gives you
valid reasons as to why what you want to do is not a good idea, listen to him, most of the time
he´s not trying to get on your nerves, he is just trying to save you from trouble. As with most
things in life, this lesson was learned the hard way. At the end of the day, I was his hero and I
guess a true camper at heart.