Day One: The Revenge of the Dead Deer *

* The story behind the title will be at the end of the post . . . 

I've had some trouble with my stitching and blogging mojo of late, to the point I was thinking of hanging up my needles and closing down the laptop for awhile.

Then Baby Girl and I trekked to Salty Yarns for a class with Betsy Morgan.

One of the other participants said that Salty Yarns is her happy place, and I have to agree. I've been reinvigorated and plying my needle more than I have in a couple of months since we came home.

And this is just part of what was in the goody box we received when we arrived:

And the opening reception was lovely, and our room was great, and it was a delightful end to what started out to be an . . . interesting . . . day . . .

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If you are interested only in stitching, you can stop reading now.

While Salty Yarns is my happy place, and Baby Girl is always happy to have a beach trip, we experienced a series of unfortunate incidents. They didn't intrude on the pleasure of the trip--more than temporarily--but it got to the point that we started wondering what might happen next.

So, our trip north . . .

We had decided to do whatever it took to avoid the mid afternoon traffic near the Navy Yard in Norfolk, and that meant that Baby Girl woke me up at 4:30 and told me to get my keister in gear. We had the car loaded and were pulling out at 5:18. It was dark. It was very dark.

But we got on the road and on our way, We watched the sun rise. We talked and laughed.

We go cross country for a bit to avoid some of the highway and traffic thereof, and we like to ride the Jamestown Ferry--so we were toodling down a two-lane country road when we came upon the squished remains of a deer in the road. The very squished remains. Baby Girl thought the car would straddle the remains. Not so much.

There was a clunk, and then there was that ominous thwap-thwap-thwap that signals doom.

We had a flat tire.

At the first opportunity (someone's driveway), we pulled over, unloaded the trunk, and dug out the spare and the jack and the tools. I was impressed by Baby Girl, who was very competently jacking up the car and getting the tire changing underway when she hit a roadblock. The lug nuts were very, very, very secure.

I was getting ready to put my not inconsiderable weight into seeing if I could help turn the wrench when this lovely, lovely, lovely gentleman stopped and took over. He got everything taken care of expeditiously, refused payment, helped us reload the car, and sent us on our way.

Our adventure wasn't quite over--we'd already decided we would find the closest place that sold tires and get the flat replaced because those little spare tires are not intended for highway driving--when the sensor on the car indicated that the other tire on the same side had low pressure.

Could it be a slow leak? We only had the one spare . . .

So Baby Girl slowly and gingerly drove the 26 miles to the next town that might be large enough to have a place that sold tires.

And we found the place.

And they found that they didn't need to replace the tire. It could be patched. And so it was. Then we discovered that the proprietor of the store has a daughter who lives one street over from me. And we all talked about what a small world it was.

By the way, the tire was punctured by a four-inch long piece of deer bone.

We were asked if we wanted it as a souvenir.

We declined.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.