Noon, Saturday.
As I reported yesterday, the UPS-contracted Canada Cartage truck with my new engine on it broke down a little more than five hours into its 46 hour journey from Salt Lake City to Edmonton Alberta on Thursday night, so it did not arrive in Edmonton this morning at 10:30 as scheduled. Just to be sure, I called Canada Cartage's Edmonton dispatch office and spoke with Tahil. She told me that the truck is still broken down and she has no word on when it will be back on the road, but took my contact information and assured me she would call me when it was back on the road with a new update of its arrival estimate. (As an aside, I always thought when these things happen, they always dispatch another truck to pick up the goods and get them delivered, but I guess I was wrong.)
Marika at Pacific Northwest assured me that if the engine arrives in Edmonton by 3:00 p.m. Monday, it will be on their Monday evening truck and arrive here Wednesday morning, just in time for Travis to install my engine and, assuming no more problems, just in time for me to load the Defender and drive it to Skagway on Sunday over White Pass, make that white White Pass since snow is forecast for that Sunday, to catch the Monday ferry. Tahil confirmed this also since the two terminals are near each other. If it does not make that truck, I have no choice but to dust off Plan B, not a very pleasant thought.
Assuming a linear relationship with delivery times, not always a safe bet, I still have until 10:00 p.m. tonight before I give up on Plan A. After that, it goes out the window. Being the optimist that I am, I will still hold out hope for another 10 hours.
Needless to ask, who I am to cast stones at someone for a mechanical breakdown? I just wonder what the truck driver's plans A and B were.
Oh, one more thing. I just looked at the weather forecast for Whitehorse for next week. Snow is forecast Monday-Wednesday, which just so happens to coincide with the truck haul, hopefully with my engine on it, from Edmonton to Whitehorse. I sure hope Marika's statement that weather never disrupted their (Pacific Northwest) deliveries holds true.
We will see what happens.
At the start of this trip, as I sketched out my ideas for the book on my eight long road camping trips, I decided to make "problems and solutions on the road" one of the major themes. Little did I realize that this trip would have not one but several major problems. The only thing wrong with this latest problem is that I can't seem to find a solution that holds for very long. That is turning out to be the problem.
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