What a rollercoaster of a day....or "Amarillo by morning...not really, 10:30pm"

The plan? 

Leave the house by 6am, run to the barn, get the horses and head up to ride camp.

The reality?

Leave the house by 6ish am, run to the grocery store, run to Discount Tire, get the horses and head up to ride camp.

So, the mechanic went over the truck with a fine toothed comb on Tuesday.  I was in a tizzy at about 1pm as they still hadn't diagnosed the problem.  At about 1:30 Joe calls and tells me what the issue is.

Apparently Discount Tire put a wrong size tire on my truck.  Just one.  They're all supposed to be 65Rs.  I had 3 65Rs and 1 70R on my truck.

This is the WRONG BLOODY SIZE!!!

This is the RIGHT size!!!

So, I called them on Tuesday afternoon and told them what they'd done.  They were apologetic and said to bring it by Wednesday morning and they'd get me fixed up.  I then spent the rest of the afternoon considering leaving work early so I could get this issue fixed and get on the road early.

But, I had things to do after work (like replace the debit card I'd LOST on Saturday!), and this wasn't one of them.

So, 7:45am, after a quick and final trip to the grocery store, I was at Discount Tire, angrily seething as I stared at my watch.  "I should already be out of the Austin area by this point.  I should already be near 2 hours on the road by this point."  And on and on the litany went in my head.

So at 8 the moment they opened their doors, I was through the door and told them "Look, I brought my truck in on Saturday, you put a wrong sized tire on and I needed to be on the road to Amarillo TWO HOURS ago and you've set me back and HORRIBLY inconvenienced me, nevermind how dangerous my truck was to DRIVE."

Apologies and "Oh how awful!" and...apparently my time, inconvenience and potentially my life was worth...$32.  *sigh*  As Joe is fond of saying "Well, it's better than a stick in the eye."  Which, I guess, is true enough.

So, at 8:17 I was out of there and on the road to the barn.  I was wondering what to do about hay as I still needed to swing by H's house to grab a fence charger (as mine stopped working at Last Hoorah for some unknown reason!).  I had forgotten that there's a place on the way to the barn that sells fairly nice square bales.  So I stopped and grabbed 2 (I almost always keep a full bale in the trailer, so figured I could get by with 3 bales and a half bale of alfalfa...in hind sight, for as long as I was gone, 4 squares would have been better.  Thank goodness for the fresh grass at ride camp!).

Now, as I drove along, I could tell there was, maybe, something still wrong with the truck.  Back end feels "wiggly".  Like it corners on glass like an ice skater.  Let me assure you, as I was to find out, for 10 and a half hours, it is nerve wracking, gut knotting and swear inducing.  Especially with a loaded trailer behind you.

My view in Goldthwaite on 183 at 1:27pm.  The turtle is one of my turtle awards...
in fact, from my very FIRST 50, which I turtled.

The drive was a drive.  I stopped a few times to offer water.  Fresh hay.  Stopped for a good 30 minutes and gave them smushes to eat while I ate at a Taco Bell (don't ask.  Geeeez.  NOT my choice, but I could get in and out and it backed up to a large parking lot....so Taco Bell it was).

Then at about 8:30 I was in Claude, Tx.  With my truck telling me to check my air filter.  Cue my hysterical texting to the Bishes (3 out of 4 of us have Super Duty Fords) and asking what to do.  Because, I cannot get to the air filter because of this..."thingy" (seems to be a gauge, but I'll go with the more technical term of "thingy") which blocked my ability to open the top for the air filter so I could pull it out and get a good look at it.

See how it blocks my ability to open the lid?  ANNOYING!!!  However, as the "thingy" has a blue button on it that says "Push to Reset", guess what I finally did?  Damn right, I pressed it...which took away the error code, and I said "Well, from what I can SEE of my air filter, it's not black, doesn't look clogged, let's keep going!"

So, I kept going.  I had about an hour and a half left to go, and, overly optimistic, I thought MAYBE I could pull into camp with just a sliver of light left to me.

Nope.  HAHAHAHAHAA!!!  What a laugh.

The directions I had weren't great, and like an idiot, I didn't print off the ride flier.  I had GPS coordinates someone had provided to me, so I had those plugged in to Waze.  Which, as I pulled into the Lake Merideth area, had me on "Plum Creek" road, which I followed.  Now, I eventually knew I was in the right place as I saw ribbons in trees.  But, by this time, it was dark and about 10pm.  I was tired and my nerves were shot from dealing with my "NQR" (that's "Not Quite Right") truck and I wanted to get out, and I wanted to get the horses out.

I couldn't find camp.  There wasn't a sign to point me in.  So, as I'm slowly driving, I see a large parking lot to my left and think "If I can't find camp, I'm going to just park there for tonight, offload the horses, let them graze, tie them off to the trailer and sleep in the truck."

About 500 yards later, guess what?  Yep, boat ramps and the end of the road.  So, fine, turned it around and did exactly that.

I offloaded the horses, and we hand grazed for an hour while I waited for both of them to pee and poop (which they did, much to my relief!).  I then grabbed their coil ties, tossed hay into a hay bag, filled up a big bucket of water and told them goodnight as I crawled into the cab of the truck to get some crappy sleep.

Now, I had cell reception, so I was briefly chatting with the Bishes to let them know I was AT the lake, but not in camp.  Coyotes were loud and a little disconcerting.  And getting comfortable took a while.  I mostly dozed.  Woke up cold at one point (who knew it got so COLD?!) and kept an eye on the clock waiting for the sun to come up so I could figure out where I was and how on earth to get to camp.