Inauspicious

Maelstrom was fun to a degree but I was plagued by a number of OOC occurrences which slightly marred our enjoyment of the event.

We arrived on site pretty much without incident and as per usual we opened the car windows as we handed over our tickets. After finding somewhere to park (having car next to OOC tent is a great idea BTW) and erecting the tent I went to lock up the car. On trying to close the driver side electric window it managed about half the full travel before something twanged and the whole window shot down into the hidden guts of the door, never to return. I was able to patch up the window with some black bin bags before the distant storms arrived but it was an inauspicious start to the day.

As we were camping Fliss gave me some of my birthday presents early. These included a fantastic stow-able sleeping bag with a rather funky silk lining and a "self-inflating" camp mat which will be a lot more portable for our trip up Kilimanjaro next year. The mat itself works better than any other I've used at insulating the body from the coldness of the ground. However it seems I'm not really designed for the relative solidness of the floor. By Sunday morning my back had decided to throw it's metaphorical arms up in disgust as I struggled for about 5-10 minutes to move from all fours to some sort of erect posture. I'm not ready to dismiss the mat completely as my situation may not have been helped by a relatively sedentary event.

All this sudden invalidity meant Fliss became responsible for all the packing of the car and the eventual drive home. On the drive home it very quickly became apparent the jury rigged replacement of black bin bags with cling-film wasn't going to hold up to motorway speeds. The final result was Fliss having to endure an open window while driving the car home while I was almost permanently apologetic for having put her through the ordeal.

Once we got home a long bath did ease my back a bit but it put the kibosh on cycling to work today. Every day I miss of work is a day I don't get paid. However we are still off to our wedding venue this afternoon to do some planning type activities. Tomorrow I drop the car off to get the windows fixed and we are off to another wedding next weekend. Hopefully we have exhausted the current run of bad luck although we are still waiting for the bank to get back to us about the mortgage.