I knew Friday and Saturday would be intense days but this was almost a little bit too much!

Working Friday the 13th… we should have hazard pay for that! We were busy all day going to post and covering for other trucks. It made the day go fast though. At 11:35ish pm we left Childrens Dallas and headed back to Forney. Or that’s where we intended to go. But we only made it to Mesquite. That’s when the truck started to make this loud weird ticking noise and smell bad. I quickly could get it to the shoulder and turn it off…

Yepp, here we were… stranded on the side of I30… it was still Friday the 13th. It was like this day wanted to end with a boom. We saw some oil dripping from the engine compartment and one thing was clear, I was not driving this thing anywhere. Dispatch called for a tow truck and Dallas sheriff to come out for traffic control. Thank goodness we didn’t have a patient on. We are a critical care truck so that would have been even worse.
It took awhile for the tow truck to show up. A command SUV came to pick us up and waited for the tow to come… People are driving like crazy… three vehicles with flashing lights (ours didn’t work when the truck was shut off) and several idiots almost hit us!

Big THANKS to Dallas SO for staying with us until the tow truck arrived! They have more important things to do but we appreciated it so much as our lights didn’t work, and people are stupid and doesn’t pay attention… just facts…

Finally the tow truck arrived… with a small truck. Our ambulance is a diesel to begin with. We had just fueled up as well And the box and equipment is heavy. I don’t know exactly but this beast is about 11,000 lbs if not more.
So when the tow truck driver starts to pull the ambulance on the tow truck, you can see the tow truck almost lift in the front end. Nothing happened but that was absolutely overloaded…

When we came back he told us that the truck he should have used is apparently in the wrap shop… oh well, we all got safely back to where we had to be. It was just for us to get another truck, stock it up and make sure we were able to run calls again. I think we were back in service around 2 am. At this point exhausted was just the beginning of what I was.

Thankfully I got like 2.5 hours of sleep at the station. But it didn’t help much. Once my relief came I had to head home and get the dogs breakfast and their medications, change shirt, make me some sandwiches and head out the door to Kaufman Harvest Fest. How I regretted doing that. I just wanted to go back to bed. Yet, I have a business to run and I had paid over $80 for a booth. So out the door I went.

I have done a couple of these events now and learned a thing or two about how to set up. But for some reason yesterday, the wind was absolutely miserable. The wind gusts came from like underneath and made everything fly! I’m talking tents, tables, products, everything! I tried to put up a windshield but that made it even worse so down it went. It usually takes me 30-45 minutes to set up from beginning to end. It took me 2 damn hours because I had to redo everything several times. Finally I had to put samples away and lay down all the products and only have one of each out.

So boring display!!! But after both me and customers had picked things up again I gave up… This is after a windgust that moved both tent and tables despite the tent being held down by cinder blocks and weights!

At that point I just wanted to pack up and go home. But I stayed. And I was so glad I did. Despite the boring display people came and looked at the bags and stocked up on their tea! I really had a great spot, just next to the square and it was a lot of foot traffic! It turned out to a very successful day!

But around 4pm my body had enough. The lack of sleep, the cold wind and probably not enough food put an end to it. I got a huge headache and started to get a little dizzy. I now had to options… pack up despite the organizers rules that we had to stay until 9:30pm or stay and risk to cause some kind of medical emergency and had no one to pack it up for me. I chose the first option. I packed up and went home. I don’t care if I am not allowed to come back next year. My health goes before your rules.

I made it home, gave the dogs their food and meds and before 6pm I was in bed sleeping like a rock. I was beyond tired and my body was so much in pain. But pleased and happy with the day after all! Even more thankful to have two more days to recover!