Luck

My biggest decision of the morning had been wether to wear the Saint Christopher braclet my dad had given me for Christmas or not. He gave it to me for safe travels. We’re not religious, but it’s the idea behind it that counts. By the time we crossed the bridge heading out of Phuket I was starting to get sore from sitting on the back of our 125cc scooter. I would be on the back the whole trip due to the fact that I’m scared to drive on highways, and also because Justin doesn’t enjoy being a passenger. My wrist was bugging me a fair amount too from the charm waving in the wind and rubbing against my skin. I almost took it off, then I got thinking. ‘This is good luck, you don’t take off a good luck charm. If I do will that give me bad luck?’ After some internal deliberation I decided I should keep it on.We were cruising along at about 100km per hour and making good time. We would be at the Ranong boarder crossing to Myanmar in a couple more hours.We were stuck behind 2 trucks that were going a bit to slow for our liking. We sped up and moved onto the left shoulder of the road. Sped up to 90...100.There was no noise, no warning. Justin was losing control of the bike. The back tire was swerving. He tried to regain control because he thought we had gotten caught on the white line causing the wheel to get out of line with the rest of the bike. With the 2 trucks beside us going 100 km on the shoulder of the road Justin was able to bring us to a stop. Some how without falling or crashing.Not dieing on the side of the road in southern Thailand was a lucky break for sure. Now however, we were stranded with a completely flat tire. there was one town 30 or so kilometers behind us and we had no idea how far ahead to the next town. I was shaking and my heart was pounding. ‘Great’ I thought, ‘now I’m going to have a panic attack.’ My mouth was drying out and I was getting dizzy. I needed to focus. I turned all my attention to Justin he was in shock that we hadn’t just died. While he was staring off into space I rubbed his back and offered him a cigarette. After accepting it enthusiastically he started to calm down, as did I.I started looking up and down the highway to see if there was anything. I knew there wasn’t but it was instinctual to check. Then I looked directly across the street from where we were stuck and said, “Maybe they fix bikes.”The yard had a bunch of bikes in it and there were people sitting out front. We had nothing to lose by walking over and asking. A middle aged Thai man got his son to talk to us because he had slightly better English. We explained what happend. When they told us they could fix it Justin and I were both relived. The father and his son started taking apart the bike in order to get the wheel off, while I sat there wondering how long it would take and how much it would cost.A little boy came running out. He can’t have been much older than 3 and he wanted to help. The older son pulled the popped tube out of the tire. It wasn’t just popped, it was completely exploded. He had to pull it out in pieces. The youngest boy took the new tube out of the package and handed it to his big brother. He looked so proud of himself for helping.Not only did they fix our tire, they also filled our front tire, tightend our breaks and cleaned our mirrors. I had been expecting we would be there for at least an hour and that it would cost around 800-1000baht. It took them half an hour and they only charged us 180baht.We gave them 300. When we handed it to the boy and walked away without our change his smile grew quickly. It was nice to see and feel that we were the reason for that smile.Back on the road we were both in shock for quite a while. I don’t know what Justin was thinking, but I couldn’t help but think ‘what if I hadn’t been wearing my lucky braclet.’