What have I done to annoy Mercury?

Or perhaps it's actually Vesta at work, who felt I should remain home a little longer :)

Regardless of which god is playing games, it appears I'll be a few days late returning to Tamarack...

So it starts w/ "The Beast" -- which is how my new truck has been named; for it is, indeed, a beast. At least when compared to the rabbit :) Anyways -- it was working beautifully. I had it packed, hooked up to the horse trailer, and ready to go. All was well w/ the world. So 4:45am I go over (it was parked at a friend of my mother's house cause it had a bigger driveway) and start it. Or try to anyways. Truck makes lots of unhappy noise, but does not actually start :( Poor form.

Call CAA (procrastination has its benefits -- I never got around to cancelling my membership when I got the rabbit). CAA comes, gives it a boost, fails miserably :( So being that it's boxing day and nothing will be open, we tell nice CAA guy he can leave it (he put a fair amount of effort into trying to make this vehicle cooperate) and we'll deal w/ it. Go home and sleep till a civilized hour, at which point I call and beg my uncle (who's an amazing mechanic) to come to the rescue. And being a wonderful soul, he does. Finds a place that's open to get the part he thinks it's likely to be and then comes over. Unfortunately my description wasn't precise enough so it turned out to be the wrong part. Once he saw it, he could diagnose it accurately, but realized he'd need it towed to the shop to fix it.

Ok so call CAA again, and while waiting for them we disconnect the trailer (using an old pair of boots as wheel blocks :), and wait for them to get there. Trailer is towed to the shop where he spends all of his vacation day working on it (of course being my vehicle it HAS to be difficult and not function the way it's supposed to for what should've been a 1h fix). He discovers it needs a diff part -- calls open part store, but they don't have any in stock. Can't get the part till Mon. :( This is less than good news.

Alright, so discuss options w/ my parents and they decide that I should fly back the next day, and they'll drive my truck/trailer there on Tues and fly home on Wed. I have amazing family :)

So call and book relevant flights etc. Get to the airport, flight's on time, all is good. By the time I got through customs, flight was showing as being 2h late; ok still no big deal. 2h later, it was another 2h late -- but this time they gave a reason. Apparently the flight crew was stuck in Chicago where they were very delayed and when they got here, we'd be going. Ok fine.

A while later, the announcer comes on and tells us their plane HAS landed, we're just waiting for crew to get through customs (have to go through CAN and back through US) and we'll be going in 1/2h. Woohoo! All good right?

Yeah, not so much. 20 mins later we get an announcement that the flight has been cancelled. Cute eh? The excuse? Flight crew has reached their maximum # of hours and can't legally fly any more. The other flight was SO late (we should've landed in NC well before this point) that they've passed the limit and that's the end. And to top it off -- no available flights until Monday night.

So since by this time it's looking like my parents driving just might make it back before me, I figure it makes more sense to just drive back on Tues... Now just have to keep fingers crossed that the truck really DOES get fixed on Mon!!! hahaha