Car Problems

Those of you who know us will be aware that our car is no spring chicken. Some of you even doubted the wisdom of us trying to take this car off Prince Edward Island.  We don't think anyone is surprised to see a blog entry titled Car Problems, but this situation actually had nothing to do with the car breaking down...

Taken yesterday morning, that rainbow ends right on our car. That is some sick, backwards foreshadowing of what kind of luck we'd have with our car that day.

Last night we went to a church supper with our hosts. We took separate vehicles and on the way home, we managed to miss the turn-off for the dirt road that leads to Bluemoon. Our hosts had been driving a few km behind us and had no way of knowing that we had missed the road. They continued on to home.

We realized within a few minutes that we had gone too far and we turned around to go back. We found the correct turn off and started down the dirt road. It was about 7:45pm, very dark, and had been raining for the past few days. Emily was driving, and was doing her best to avoid the hundreds of potholes in the road She hugged the right shoulder to avoid a particularly deep pothole...without realizing that there was no shoulder. Moragh tried to warn her but it was too late, and the car slid down into what was not the shoulder of the road but a deep, water-filled and very muddy ditch. Trying to steer back onto the road was absolutely useless and the car gently came to a stop with the right wheel almost entirely submerged and the left wheel just barely touching the ground. With some effort due to the extreme angle, we crawled out of the car to assess the situation.

1) Neither one of us had a cell phone.

2) We wouldn't have had reception anyway.

3) We were in the middle of nowhere with no houses in sight.

4) It was pitch dark and raining.

5) Was Betty freaking out, wondering where we were?

6) Bears.

We tried to sort the rational thoughts (how far away is help if we really need it?) from the irrational (we won't see a black bear in the dark until it's right on top of us) and make a plan. Moragh quickly took charge as Emily was feeling very stupid and guilty for having essentially driven the car off the road (and was maybe a little bit scared in the dark). In the summertime, Moragh routinely sets up pulley systems to haul canoes in freezing cold rivers, and thought that maybe a similar pulley system would be enough to help haul the car out of the muck. It was a brave and optimistic plan, and she tried for probably close to an hour to set it up, but the fatal flaw was that she had no rope. What she did have was a slack line. People who understand slack lining are already giggling, but for those of you who don't get it yet, a slack line is by definition a rope that never gets taut. It's a length of dynamic webbing that will, when stretched, just keep getting springier. So no matter how much she pulled on it, the force would not be translated into moving the car. Never ever. So after a very frustrating hour, we decided to call that whole plan off and walk out to the road to find help.

We went to the first house we saw with lights on, and found two young couples sitting in their living room waiting to watch The Walking Dead. Before you could say "car stuck in mud" the two men had their coats on and were digging out chains and talking about whose pick-up would be best for the job. We called Betty and let her know we were safe, and then the gentlemen gave us a lift down to our car and hauled us out (with considerable effort). They were our heroes that night, and we gave them each a beer before they left as thanks. Here's to you, Johnny and Mark!

TL;DR - car got stuck in muddy ditch, in the dark in the middle of nowhere with no cell phones, friendly locals pulled us out, no harm done to car, the end.