life is messy sometimes...literally

I was talking recently with a friend about being honest about life, but not over-sharing.  I don't want to give the impression that life here is just one grand adventure after another, nor do I want to emotionally vomit into the world wide web.  Simply, I want to portray that it is real life, with rough days, bad moods, and my usual struggles.  On Thursday, I had the perfect example of this.  Here is my list of everything NOT to do:

1.  Don't wear some nice, fashionable boots with a skirt when driving through German back country (at least, not when you plan do the following things you really should NOT do).

2. Don't be impatient and try to take a back road when there is huge construction truck going 5 MPH on the road in front of you.

3.  When going down said back road and it looks like it doesn't lead anywhere, don't drive till the end where the road turns into dirt, and there is no place to turn around.

4.  When you have to back-up down this narrow road with mud on either side, be sure to remember when your car doesn't have power steering and that a slight curve takes a lot more oomph to go around than usual, and don't underestimate and go off the road into the mud.

5.  When you have backed up into the freshly plowed field and your wheels have gotten caught in the thick clay-like mud, don't let your pride get in the way of calling someone for help.

Now that you know everything NOT to do, let me explain how I managed to recover after doing every single one of those things.  First of all, I can thank my dad and brothers for imparting enough car knowledge to me that I did know NOT to give the car a lot of gas, spinning the wheels even deeper into the mud.  Also, I knew that I needed more traction, so I gathered dead grass and straw from across the road to stuff around and under the wheels.  I would then climb into the car, gradually ease from clutch to gas (oh...right...did I mention yet that I did this with a manual transmission, which I have only been driving for about 4 weeks now?) and move about half an inch, throw up the parking brake, climb out, dig out more mud from around the tire, add more straw, and repeat.  It only took about 30-40 minutes of doing this, and then I was finally free.  I was also covered head to toe in mud, with frozen hands and feet.  I knew I wouldn't want to forget the lesson I learned, so I captured the memory with my phone:

At the very bottom of the photo are the ruts my front tires were stuck in.

I made sure that once I did get free, I would have somewhere to go and wouldn't drive into more mud.  After this, I backed up till the bottom of the hill, where I could turn around on a small gravel road, and then go back home.  After a good cleaning, the car looks even better than it did before I dragged it through the dirt.  And I recovered well after a hot shower and some hot tea.  Lessons learned.