Got a nice early start today, took an hour less to get ready since I didn't have to load the trailer, then move, then unload the trailer, then load the horses, the load the trailer again, like I had to do at Coldwater, so things went a lot faster. We were out by about 8:30, and since we had had a sewer hook-up, we didn't even have to make a dump stop. We dropped a Fedex box at the office, as I had made arrangements for a pickup here today, with labs that are essential for Hubby to get an in-center dialysis session next week on our business trip to Nebraska. Things were going great until I got a phone call from Fedex wanting to know where in the campground we were located because they couldn't go searching all over for us to pick up the package. I called them and learned they were trying to find us at Wolf Creek Campground in southern Illinois! Evidently, all of the information about being at McCulley Farms was completely ignored, they just went back to an address we had used ONCE about 10 MONTHS AGO!! How stupid can you get??? I argued with them for a long time, explaining that this was literally and truly a matter of life and death, and they said they would "try" to get the driver to go back and get the package. They wanted me to meet the driver at a Flying J 15 minutes from McCulley Farms (we were already 100 miles from there), and it only got worse from there. After we had gone through the Ag stop on I-75 south of Lake City, our ETA at our friend Cherryl's horse farm was 12:30, which was spectacular. I had planned on arriving early, doing some socializing to get caught up, and then dialyzing Hubby this afternoon. But you know how it is with the best-laid plans! We were only about an hour or so from our desitnation in Dade City when I suddenly felt something change in the feel of my truck. I suddenly had no power steering, no brakes, and my battery light came, which I realized meant my serpentine belt had given way, darn it! Fortunately there was an exit a half mile away, with a mechanic shop just on the other side of the overpass, so I parked along the exit ramp and walked over. They managed to drive it over, checked it out, ordered the part, tried to talk me into a bunch of other stuff, and charged me $250 to change the belt, including $35 for "shop supplies," $94 for a belt my mechanic says costs about $40, and charged me more than an hour of labor @ $130/hour, even though it only took about 10 minutes to do the job. What can I say, we were a captive audience with no place else to go, darn it. That episode set us back a couple of hours, but we managed to get on the road and still get to Cherryl's by around 2:30, with me still arguing with Fedex almost the entire way. What is it with them? Why can't they just say YES and be good at customer service, rather than NO, NO, NO and making enemies? Again, mostly captive audience, I guess. In the end, they promised to get the package picked up today, and eventually left me a voice mail saying they had, so I guess the labs are on the way. After getting set up and the horses settled in, plus a bit of catching up, it was too late to dialyze Hubby today (and I was a bit too irritated to focus after all the crap that happened). Our hosts fed us a spectacular meal, which went a long way to assuage my stress, and we finally settled in for the evening before heading to bed in this quiet, and (finally) dark place!
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