Not your normal car troubles

Two crazy stories:

1. It was one of our regular trips to the hospital and Jim was driving me (thank goodness!). We were on the freeway, when suddenly one of our tires blew out. Jim pulled over quickly and with impressive speed changed our tire, using the spare. I was really nervous for him this whole time because there wasn't much room for him to change the tire and he was on the side were all the traffic was whizzing by really quickly. When he got the tire changed, we felt relieved and he climbed into the van to start back on our way to the hospital. He turned the key and...
the car wouldn't start! The blasted battery was dead! Of all the things I have heard of, I have never heard of both those things happening at the same time! What in the world! So, Jim got back out of the car and started walking up the freeway to the nearest phone to call a tow truck (yes, we are still old fashioned, and don't have a cell phone). So I slid into the drivers seat to wait and keep trying to start the car. After about 15 minutes, a police car pulled up behind me. The police man came up to my window and asked if he could help. I explained the situation and I thought there was nothing the police man could do, so he went back over to his car. I noticed that he didn't leave, so I thought he was just being nice, to not leave me alone on the freeway. But, about 10 minutes later he came back to my window to tell me that he had called a service man to come and jump our car with a special portable jumper cable box. His service was free! What a great thing! The service man was quick to get there and was already jumping the car by the time Jim got back. We were soon on our way again! Jim had to spend much of the next day (after spending all night at the hospital) getting a new tire and replacing the battery.
Crazy huh!?!

2. The parking area surrounding our town home was scheduled to be repaved, so we were informed by our HOA that on these two certain days we had to find other parking for our vehicles. On these days we made sure we found parking in the surrounding neighborhood. Jim had borrowed our brother-in-law's truck for the week, because I had so many doctor's apts, we couldn't share our one van. So, Jim got home from work about 6:30 on the 1st night and parked the car in what seemed to be a good place...
The next morning when he walked out to go for work, the truck was gone!!!! Oh my goodness, was it stolen? Jim came in and woke me to tell me he had to use the van to go to work, and I would have to find other ways to get the kids to school and to my doctors appointments. I would also need to investigate what in the world has happened to my brother-in-law's truck! Our 1st hope was that it was mistakenly towed before we were to file a police report. I went out to look at the spot were Jim had parked the truck, and there was no sign saying that we were not allowed to park there and all the lots by it were empty (so we knew it wasn't a needed spot). I was sure it was not in the area were were supposed to stay off of too. I walked over to our HOA manager and talked to her about it. She explained that she had found out that morning that the HOA manager of the neighboring units was really mad about the situation of us using their parking and had all the cars in his area towed, without any warning to us. Of all the nerve! Is that even legal?
So a day 1/2 later and $175 less in the pocket, we got the truck back. If only we had known.