So I had one hell of an interesting day. Along with a series of unfortunate events.
It started when I overslept for work by two hours. I drive to work in Chris's car because he wanted me to get an oil change for his car. The place is next to Wal-Mart so i figure I can drop it off and walk the extra mile to work. No such luck. Halfway there, a cop pulls me over. Apparently the license plate I had just attached to his car wasn't attached all the way and was dangling by a screw. Chris didn't have his registration in the car. It's on my insurance, but I have no insurance card since it's all online and I never bothered to request one. To make matters more interesting, my drivers' license picture has me with neon purple hair. Fortunately, Chris had his title in the glove box, so I got let off with merely a warning for "faulty equipment."
By this time, I'm even later to work so I decide to screw the oil change. I'm now 2 1/2 hours late, and sure I'll be fired. No such luck. My boss is unusually cheerful. Idon't tell her I'm leaving for the field trip and I promptly disappear at noon. (Side note: I had asked for this day off a month in advance, but they denied the request, saying I didn't turn it in on time, which is three weeks in advance. Wal-Mart follows their own calendar as well as time scale. I told them I had to go and when they avoided me, decided to risk being fired just to go since I had been looking forward to this for over a month. And I would be perfectly happy to lose my job there, but that's another story...).
I drop Chris's car off at my place and take my car to the observatory (where i'm going). Halfway down highway 230, I get pulled over by a cop. Okay, a year and a half ago, a moron slammed into my car and ripped the front bumper off. He was uninsured and Wyoming had just changed insurance laws so my insurance no longer covered property damage by uninsured motorists. The court ordered him to pay for repairs, but since then, he has paid only $150 out of $1500 because he's constantly in jail (disturbing the peace, breaking smoking ban, indecent exposure, underage drinking, etc). My front licence plate had been on my dash since then because even though I got the car patched together, there was no longer a place to hold the plate. But yesterday, I had decided to get it on there one way or another.
So i'm driving down the highway and my front plate falls off right as I drive past a state trooper. Another "faulty equipment" warning later, I'm now half an hour late to meet the tour (at least I had my registration in the car).
And that's just the first half of my day. Actually, in the scale of things, first third.
So the directions to the observatory that the class coordinater gave me were "go down highway 230, turn left onto highway 10 and follow it up the mountain to the observatory." So I follow the directions. When I get to Larimer County, Colorado, I decide something's amiss. Eespecially since the observatory is now 10 miles behind me and I'm going downhill. So I turn around and drive back , looking for another turn that was conveniently not mentioned. I drive past a gravel pile with a faded wooden sign saying "Wyoming Infrared [rest covered in sagebrush]." I figure that has to be it and the mountain is right there so I turn onto it. There's a sign that says "Impassable Nov-May." Not unusual, as it is the Snowy Range area and most places around here are impassable to everything but snowmobiles a good chunk of the year.
What the sign should have said was "only tanks allowed beyond this point."
There were parts of the road that were good, but most of it was made of pyramid-shaped rocks, with all the pointy ends sticking up. I passed a utility truck with steel-reinforced tractor tires that was changing a flat! Of course, I figure my car's plastic and the size of a lawnmower, so it's light enough to just float over the road.
Boy was I wrong.
I get two flat tires at once. The road is one lane, but fortunately there's a slightly wider spot up ahead, so I maneuver over and park precariously on the side of a cliff, hoping a gust of wind doens't come along and send my car hurtling down the mountain.
So the observatory is on the top of this mountain, which is about 2600 feet above the turnoff from highway 10 (i.e. the bottom of said mountain. It's 9626 feet above sea level). I'm about 2/3 of the way up this mountain in distance, but only just over halfway up in elevation. So I decide it's not that much farther and I have water, a hiking pack, boots (which I always carry them around here), and my sandwich that I didn't get to. So I climb the next 1000ish feet up.
I arrive at the observatory an hour and a half late and there's no one else there, but two sleepy astronomy students and two engineers. And the engineers are repairing the telescope. I sit in the shade and eat my sandwich, enjoy the scenery, go nerdy over the geologic view, etc. Half an hour later, the repairs are done and I get to start the tour. I got an awesome tour and a lot more than most people do becaus eI'm the only one there. No one else made it up the mountain.
After it was over, I went back to my car, changed one flat, patched another, and drove back down into Laramie (only about 40 miles away), got new tires, called the class coordinator, and demanded my fee back.
Then I get home...
My new satellite receiver has finally arrived, but there's no UHF antenna so my remote is useless! The guy that came to fix my lines and get me a new receiver had taken my antenna off my receiver and put it on another one, hoping he could get it to work, but when he put the other one back in the box, he forgot to put my antenna back. The new receiver was arriving in two days so I figured I could wait, no problem. But when I called tech support, they said it was going to take 7-10 days because they're sending it USPS. The receiver was sent UPS second day! Now I'm stuck for the next week with a useless remote.
So basically, it was a series of unfortunate, but interesting events. I got to collect rocks and get a profile of Jelm Mountain geology. And I got to miss five hours of work (not counting sleeping in). So the good outweighed the bad.
Of course I don't know if I'm still employed, but risking it to have this adventure was well worth it. My only regret was I didn't bring Kitty along.
But there's one sinister thing I had blocked out of my mind, until Raymond reminded me. I saw my Crazy Ex Neighbor driving down my street. She's back.
