"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."
- G. K. Chesterton

Last Sunday night, I grafted the toe on the first of a pair of socks destined to grace Jabin's footies, wove in the end, and immediately after I clipped the yarn I noticed that when I had turned the heel, I had managed to skip about 8 stitches, leaving about an inch of yarn running straight across the bottom of the heel in a most inconvenient manner. Non-knitters may wonder how I managed to do that, but the technical explanation will leave you glassy-eyed, so just trust me that it can be done. This was actually the second sock in a row I had managed to do this magic trick on, but the first time, I caught the mistake after only a few rows. This time, I was finished the sock. Deep down, I knew that the only way to really fix this problem was going to be to frog ("rippit, rippit") it back to the offending row and re-do the last few hours of work. Grumpily, I tossed it aside.

I thought of that sock a lot yesterday. I wished I had it with me to ease the tension, or (more like) the boredom, I was experiencing on my current "adventure".

You see, the day before as I left the house for a day of shopping and errands in Grande Prairie, I looked at my long, long list and the thought crossed my mind to bring my knitting. What would be the point in that? I wondered. I never have time to knit on an "errands day" anyway, especially one in G.P. So I left it at home.

By that night, as I was trying to wind down in the holiday trailer belonging to the couple we had bought our new home from at their farm near Teepee Creek (about forty-five minutes from G.P.), I was wondering what normal people did when they had nothing to do. And by "normal", of course, I mean "those who aren't obsessive-compulsive knitters". I wondered about it even more yesterday, as I twiddled my thumbs around the town of Sexsmith, waiting for my van to be repaired so we could finally go home. Had I only thought to bring my knitting, I could have finished those socks today, with no guilt for the amount of hours taken away from renovating to do it! I lamented.

As it was, the kids and I got well acquainted with the one-horse town of Sexsmith before the van was repaired and we were on our way at 4:30. Also, I texted to Jason a lot! :-D

See, I had been going to check on the addition (which is still at the previous owners' old farmyard) and to get the pantry shelves for my kitchen which I knew were leaning against the wall of the storage room there. On the way back toward the highway, I was squinting into the sun, low in the west, when I hit a huge mound of gravel on the road which had been squished up by the large trucks that often travelled there. A mile later, my van completely overheated, binging at me wildly. Sure enough, that gravel had blasted my fan belt in two, and it was now firmly wrapped around my water pump and alternator and was visible hanging from the bottom of my van from twenty feet away.

Fortunately, I knew that the folks we had bought our trailer from lived in a family farmhouse they had just inherited, and it was only a few miles away. In fact, I had seen their pickup truck in the hay field next to the addition when I had stopped there, so I knew they were around. God allowed my phone call to get through, despite the spotty cell phone service where I was parked, and Karen was soon on her way with Barry to rescue me.

Did they ever (rescue me, I mean)--for a couple we barely know, who owe us no favours, they went beyond the extra mile. Karen took my kids back to their house while Barry and I did a "farmer-tow" of the van back to the yard where the addition is. Then we headed over to their house so I could update Jason and decide what to do. By then, B&K had offered to let us sleep in the holiday trailer, and were already brainstorming about the closest tow truck and mechanic.

In the morning, to save us the nearly $300 it would have cost to get a tow truck out of G.P. to haul us to Sexsmith, they borrowed a car-hauler trailer from their neighbour, and Karen took us to town herself, to the mechanic that Barry had arranged for first thing. This was after a full, farm breakfast, and on a day with plenty of haying still to be done (the rain has pushed the whole season quite late, this year).

Honestly, I wasn't really stressed out about the whole thing at any point. As I told Karen on the way into town, "This isn't the most exciting adventure I've ever had..." Maybe it is because of the fact that I have been in far worse pickles, and things have always ended up okay, that this seemed more like a little unplanned adventure than anything else.

So what did I learn from this particular adventure? I mean, besides the fact that there are still really kind and generous people in the world?

Never leave home without my knitting again, of course!

(The next "Suddenly Busy" update will be coming "soon"--I promise! *heh, heh*)