Vacation failure again…

I may have mentioned the last couple of vacation failures. They were supposed to be our great trip to Hawaii, the first because it was our 25th wedding anniversary, but was also Covid and so we couldn’t go, and the second because we didn’t go the first time, but it was still Covid and then stroke, so we ended up taking a three day break in Whistler instead. Very similar, in many respects.

Mrs Dim keeps pointing out that I am under a lot of stress, trying to manage the house and help with the kids’ schooling, and Mrs Dim’s medical requirements, and do my day job. I don’t really notice the stress until she points it out, but I suppose she’s right. Anyway, this led to me deciding I would just impulsively take a week off work. Not worry about who would pick up the slack, or anything, just announce my leave, fill out the forms and go!

Mrs Dim fixed up a couple of nights in the Coast Hotel in Osoyoos, somewhere we had stayed before and very much enjoyed. It’s a four-hour drive, but I like the journey, and it would just be the two of us. No leaping out of bed in the morning to feed pets, no collecting kids from this or that, no washing up after meals. A real break.

Unfortunately, that break was *something* in the back of the car, 200km from home AND 200 km from our destination. We were close enough to Manning Park to limp into the car park so we could look under the car. Everything looked ok, but the car was definitely making a weird rattling noise it hadn’t before, so we called BCAA. They said they’d send someone out to look at it. Now, the last time I called BCAA for help with the Cursed Mini, they sent a guy with an entire mechanic’s tool collection in the back of his truck. He could have built another car out of the spare parts he carried. This was the kind of person I was expecting.

A very confused tow-truck guy (called “Guy”, as it happens) came out. He was confused because he was told the car was a “Mazda F-150” (which doesn’t exist) and it had a flat tyre (which it didn’t.) We drove him up and down the car park so he could hear the worrying sound for himself, but it turned out that didn’t matter because

A: He wasn’t a mechanic

B: He didn’t have any tools and

C: he’d only been driving a tow truck for three months.

He offered to tow us to Princeton where there was a tyre company and a motel. He then admitted the tyre company probably couldn’t fix the car, and the motel was full. On the other hand, it was close, and he lived there, so it was convenient for him.

We instead opted to be towed to Hope, which was only an hour away, had an actual garage that could at least look at the car, and was close enough to home that a Weasel could come out in the Cursed Mini and take us home. An hour isn’t much, but it’s a long time in the cramped cabin of a tow-truck owned by a forty-a-day smoker with no teeth, who tells you fifteen minutes into the journey that he’s unvaccinated and believes Covid to be a scheme by Bill Gates to reduce the world’s population….

Anyway, Middle Weasel drove out to Hope to rescue us, and Eldest and Tiny Weasel made sure there was food ready for us, and that the guy putting the finishing touches to the living room wall was done and paid before we got home.

It was not the two nights away from home we’d hoped for, but there were reasons to be cheerful. BCAA covered the costs of the towing. The garage fixed the car and it only cost $600 (yes, that’s a lot, but it’s way less than I thought it was going to be. Also, ANOTHER mysterious rattling noise that no one ever thought was serious has now ceased.) The hotel refunded us our booking. And yes, we DID have to drive back to Hope to retrieve the big car, but that meant Mrs Dim and I got another drive together, and another romantic Subway lunch in picturesque Hope*.

*This is sarcasm. Subway is the only reason to stop in Hope, with no offense intended to those people who, ah ha ha ha, “live in Hope”.