Road tripping is unpredictable. You might end up camping in the desert with a tractor, for example. But in the end, it s all good.

Bad trips were once a bad habit of mine.

I bugged out of the Midwest every break during college with my boyfriend, his dog and not quite enough money in my pocket. He left town with objectives; I left town ready to endure much of his unrealistic agenda but knowing that before trip's end, I would throw at least one monkey wrench in his carefully conceived plans.

When we fought, I won. But fights make for bad trips, and winning doesn't reverse that -- only time can twist a bad trip to good. Cases in point:

One spring break I spent a night puking my dignity out in the Arizona desert. We drove into Mexico the next morning, sneaking the dog over the border (and arguing over it). I slept off my food-poisoning purge as we passed men in jeeps with machine guns. I sampled tequila for the first time; it was repulsive in my raw throat.

On a winter break, my friend Al spun his van around 360 degrees on the icy interstate and almost landed us in a ditch. A few nights later, camping at the Grand Canyon, I was so cold I ditched the boys and spent part of a night on the floor of a heated campground bathroom (the next morning, another argument).

These are fond memories now, formative experiences. But on my now-favorite trip, another spring break, I spent a night stranded on a remote highway in Texas just after an ice storm. With four boys, none of whom could manage to change our shredded tire. (Me: Ignorant yet infuriated. Age: 20.)

Al called AAA; they never came. I demanded that we do something; the boys pocketed their hands. We walked to the next exit; nothing there. The temperature was in the teens when, after 11 or maybe midnight, we tried to sleep.

Fear jarred me every time a truck blasted by in the night. After dawn my boyfriend and I caught a ride on one of those trucks, after shaking one of the boys awake to tell him we were going for help. (How were they so sound asleep?)

I'd never hitchhiked before. I was amazed the cab of the truck was so spacious, that the truckers had a little lap dog, that someone was sleeping in the back, that this was their life.

In the next town, 21 miles away, we waited for the tow-truck driver to wake up, pick us up and drive us 21 miles back to the van...which was missing when we arrived.

"It's not there? It's not there!"

Abandoned?!?

"I think I know where they are," the tow-truck driver muttered under his mustache.

He did. In the middle of nowhere in Texas, there are only so many places you can take a van for a tire change. Or anything, for that matter.

My boyfriend raged at our three companions. They screamed back: Where did you go? I cried in relief and crawled past the case for the spare tire, into the back of the van, where I stayed in silence until they dropped me off at home a thousand miles later.

Time turned that trip from trash to treasure. From our incompetence to my panic, it had a visceral grittiness that speaks to why I love road trips -- I want to feel that grit.

It all turned out fine. I didn't talk to those three boys ever again.