Not sure what chain of events led to this, but in my imagination, someone is sitting on a bus, looking down and saying, "What the...? I know I had on two flip-flops when I left the house this morning."
I set off on my two and a half hour drive and it was awesome. The weather was great, the landscape was beautiful, the sights were interesting, and my foot felt fine. All was well, until I got about ten miles away from the ranch, when the temperature warning light came on in my car. Did I mention that this ranch is in the middle of nowhere? With no cell reception? I slowly coaxed the car to the ranch's entrance gate, where it finally gave up. I tried calling and texting my colleagues who were already there, with no luck. So it was time to hoof it. I knew from the directions that the house was about three miles from the gate, so I figured I'd better get going. Because, as the song says, the road goes on forever...
I was about a mile down the road when a pickup came from the house to pick me up. My texts had finally gone through and they knew I needed assistance. We tried adding water to the radiator with no luck, so they pushed my car inside the gate and took me to the meeting. After a couple of hours, they went to get the car and got it started enough to bring it to the house, where we saw that the engine was shaking rather violently. Uh, oh. After a call to AAA and another hour wait, my car was on a tow truck headed to who knows where.
Since I now had to rely on the kindness of one of my colleagues who lives in the same town to get me home, I had to stay until the rest of the activities were done. Which included skeet shooting. This is a group of men who shoot guns on a regular basis. They invited me to participate, no doubt intending to have a laugh at the expense of the girl who spends most of her days sitting behind a desk. What they didn't know is that this was not my first rodeo. I haven't shot skeet in a long while, but it must be like riding a bike, because my first shot turned the clay pigeon into a puff of black smoke, and I must admit I enjoyed hearing the collective "Whoa..." behind me when it happened. My entire outing was only average, but I hung with them pretty well. The best part? None of them knew I had a battery in my hip and stitches in my head. Nope. To them I'm just the girl who can walk a mile down a caliche road in cowboy boots and isn't a bad shot.
As I finally walked in the front door tonight, I was thinking that for a day when my car broke down in the middle of nowhere, it was a pretty good day. Then my phone rang. It was my credit card company calling with concerns about a possible fraudulent charge. Oh, you mean the tow truck charge from the middle of nowhere? Nope. They asked if I was in Illinois today. (Spoiler alert - I was not.) Sure enough, someone with a counterfeit copy of my credit card tried to use it to buy nearly $1,000 worth of clothes from the Polo store. My compliments to the evildoer on his or her good taste in clothing. Fortunately, the charge was declined as being potentially fraudulent. So the last few moments of the evening were spent getting the card deactivated and a new one issued.
Today definitely had its ups and downs. But my foot felt pretty good all day, Tomorrow will be challenging with no vehicle or credit card. And no skeet shooting.
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