Murphy's law

I'm sure that somewhere Murphy's law states that if you are traveling on the Sunday of a long weekend you will get a flat tire.
Or maybe it's the new curse of the McDonald's that seems to be forming around us. Bob says that there must have been an ancient clan war resurrected (he & Morgan have been playing Clash of the Clans on the Ipod, so he may have a skewed view). Both times now when we (truck & trailer) have pulled off the highway to go to McDonald's for lunch, poof! Flat tire. Last time was the trailer tire. This time we picked up a screw on truck tire. I heard the hiss when I hopped out of the driver's seat and knew pretty much instantly what was up. We had just picked it up and the tire was still nearly full, but it was losing air fast, so we moved a few blocks away to an empty lot in order to better assess the damage.Of course, it being a Sunday afternoon of a long weekend, we were left to our own skills. There were three tire shops within viewing distance, but all of them were closed. No worries - Super Bob to the rescue. He found the tools, jacked up the truck, and got the tire swapped out for the spare. It was time consuming, but not exactly difficult. Then we showed that darned McDonald's who's boss by going to Pizza Hut instead.

But not before I encountered the next effect of Murphy's law. Somewhere else in the fine print the law states that you will remember to stow everything else, but forget to secure the breakable object that will make the greatest mess.
The road from Valleyview to Grande Prairie gets quite rough, and my dad had warned me about it last week when he was up this way. It's not rough in the continual bumpy sort of way, it's rough in the repeated dips in the road that get the truck & trailer bouncing and oscillating. That made for ideal conditions to open up the one upper cabinet that we hadn't secured closed and send it's contents flying across the main living area. Unfortunately that was the cabinet where all the "adult beverages" were stowed. When I opened up the door to the let the cat in while we changed the tire, the aroma of liquor hit me. Uh oh. There was spilled alcohol and broken glass all over. Now, this may not actually have been Murphy's work so much as us pushing our luck. I mean, really! We should have known better than to store all the bottles up there. I'm actually quite amazed that only a few actually smashed. The majority were still intact. But that small amount sure made a big mess! It changed our camping plans just a little bit, since we needed supplies to clean everything up.  

We booked ourselves a campspot right in town (city actually) for two nights at the Grande Prairie Rotary Campground. We're in the pull-through spots which are open and close to the highway, but we're really close to all the amenities, including a large walking trail/ park system and the campground has excellent wifi (something I've been missing since moving from the house) so it works out well overall. This evening Bob went and purchased a small vacuum to suck up all the tiny shards of glass, and I'll try to find a steam cleaner to rent in the morning to get all the sticky, smelly liquid out of our carpet. Nothing like a bit of domestic cleaning in the middle of an adventure to put life into perspective.

Hopefully Murphy is done with us for a while, cause I'm sure done with him!