Finally, We Have Arrived!

So yesterday didn't exactly go according to plan! The night before we left, Harris realized our car wasn't working so he phoned our car rental company, Eurocar, and they sent a mechanic out who met with Harris at 2am. He indicated the car needed to be towed because the fuel line was frozen (go figure!) but he took it off to try and get it going with no luck. We thought he was just being a pessimist and that all we had to do was get the car warm enough to get started and we'd be good to go. The senior team got a jump from the French team, but told us the French were in a rush so we couldn't get the same so while the senior team left at about 10am, we still had a dead van. Harris, being the resourceful guy that he is,convinced Patrice to ask his dad to come up and give us a jump. The good news was the van finally started. The bad news was that once van got going, fuel started pouring out of the fuel line. Uh-oh! The mechanic had spilt the fuel line in working on it in -22 weather. So we were stuck in Bessans...
 
Harris worked hard all morning phoning Eurocar, local mechanics and others trying to get us out of Bessans (his cell phone bill is going to be crazy!), but it finally came down to us taking a cab from Bessans to the Geneva airport to pick up a new rental van - I kid you not! 420 euros, or about 650 CDN, is what it cost. Luckily, Eurocar will pick up that tab.

We left Bessans at 2pm and arrived in Oberried at 10pm so another long travel day. And just like the first time we drove through Switzerland, it snowed pretty much the whole way once we got into Switzerland until we left it. We are very fortunate that everyone in our group is easy going and can accept these delays with more than a little humour.

So we missed our Geneva field trip, but we made it Oberried in one piece with all our gear and that is what is most important right now.

Anyway, we're going out for a ski this morning, though not on the race course as Oberried just finished hosting the FIS World Junior Championships and the race courses aren't ready for us. Then again, are we ready for them?