50 Reasons: Murphy's Law, Revisited

Murphy's Law, Revisited

Bob and I had the good fortune of being invited to visit our friends at their home in Scotland this fall. Although we had several months' advance notice, we deliberately made no plans or arrangements other than booking our airfare, so this trip would have a chance at being a happy-go-lucky jaunt through the British Isles, beginning with Scotland and then moving on to visit relatives in Ireland. Well, I don't know if it was the lack of planning, jet lag or just plain old senility, but Murphy's Law kicked in and all we can do now is laugh about it and wonder what the heck is the matter with us.

We look so happy, before all the "fun" began!

Starting off the trip, our neighbor Bryan drove us to the airport and Bob left his phone in the car after we were dropped off. Since he is constantly texting the girls, Bob realized it was missing before Bryan got too far away, and got the phone back before we finished checking in.

Then, after landing at Heathrow for a 5 hour layover before heading up to Edinburgh, Bob somehow misplaced his phone again. He noticed it was missing as we were sitting down for lunch, because I suddenly realized I'd left my laptop at the security checkpoint and in my panic, he started fumbling for his phone and found it was also gone. I got my laptop back without issue, but Bob was not so lucky. To make matters worse, this was a new iphone5, his second in two weeks. He'd just replaced the first one because it went through the washing machine, presumably to rinse off the salt water from when he dropped it into Tomales Bay the week before that. The bright side: a good samaritan German tourist found the phone and took it home. He called Marie to make arrangements to return it, and I believe it's on its way back to the States right now. In the meantime, we bought a basic phone in Scotland for about $25.00 and now I am in charge of it. Although that is not really much comfort....

After stressing over the phone (before we knew it was getting returned) we decided there was nothing that could be done, so we did a little shoppping at Heathrow and then I sat down with my newly recovered laptop to book a hotel in Scotland. After nearly finalizing my hotel reservation, I clicked on a link to view the parking and cancellation policies. Little did I know that when I was returned to the reservation form, the dates of my reservation had defaulted back to some kind of standing date, which was December 10, 2012. I completed my reservation and paid the non-cancellable fee before noticing this. Ugh!! I tried to change the date using the "amend my reservation" button, but apparently that button is only meant for people with a working brain. For people like me there was only a rude message reminding me my reservation was non-cancellable. I booked a seccond reservation for that evening, hoping I could work something out with the front desk. And, as luck would have it, the people of Scotland are nice and pleasant and are accustomed to senile old women. They very cheerfully fixed the mess I'd created and sent us on our way to the pubs to unwind after a very long day.

The next day, when we were refreshed, we did a little local sight-seeing then headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car and begin our journey to our friend's home in Moffat, with a detour to Stirling Castle and the monument to William Wallace (of "Braveheart" fame). On the way there, we had a close encounter with a curb which ended up damaging the rental car tire to the tune of about $300. The car agency told us to go to the nearest Hertz location to change the car, which happened to be Glasgow Airport, but upon arriving, they had no cars of any type available. What next???? We begged and pleaded and eventually they found a car for us, called a "Juke". Not as nice as the Audi we had, but at least it fit our monstrous amount of luggage. So again, everything worked out.

We spent several fun days with our friends, then departed today to head over by ferry to Ireland. ViaMichelin, the MapQuest-equivalent over here, said to estimate 4.5 hours of driving time. Our ferry left at 2:10 PM so we left Moffat at about 7 AM. About an hour into the route, the GPS started talking to us, telling us there were traffic issues ahead. It kindly informed us it was redirecting our route which took us off the main freeway and onto a winding maze of little side streets, all the while adding time to our trip. We did not have a reliable map so we were at the mercy of this demonic GPS. At 11 AM, we pulled off to get fuel, and Guess What? Another mishap. Unleaded fuel into the Diesel engine. UGHHHHHHH. What NEXT???? We called Clyde the Mechanic who came down to siphon our tank, for the low price of only $200. And now we realized we are most likely going to miss our ferry. OK, enough stress for one day. I decided to call the ferry company and change our tickets to the 5 PM ferry, and just pay the $30 change fee. Except, due to the terrible storms that day, the 5 PM highspeed ferry had been cancelled and the next available ferry was not until the next day. That meant paying the change fee and losing one night's deposit on our hotel in Dublin - another $150. OK, give up on that idea. We are going to make that ferry. The good news? Bob was able to get us to the terminal with about 15 minutes to spare. We ran inside to drop off the rental car......except the port rental car office was closed and a kindly sign suggested we drive into town and drop the car there. Only a 5 minute walk back to the ferry building, it assured us. Forget it. We left the keys at the closed desk and called the car company and told them to come pick up the car. No idea if that is going to cost us or not. Don't care. We made the ferry - last ones to board - arrived in Dublin and made it without incident to our hotel, where we are now hunkered down and getting ready for bed.