Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Worst place you've been stranded?
So I thought I'd open this up as a question to get people talking and maybe sharing stories...
... but this really stems from my lovely Friday night experience. So, our friend from Barrie, his band was playing in Alliston Friday night (at 12:30am). To support him we make the trek up there, as we drive through Alliston, DH notices a slight problem with his truck, but figures after letting it rest it'll be fine. After the show we go to leave and the truck starts fine and away we go... until just as we start leaving Alliston all hell breaks loose.... we start losing power, there is a really bad odor in the truck... at this point DH just wants to make it off this side road and make it back to the 400. Well, we weren't so lucky... the truck died in the middle of no where. Luckily, our friend was driving by, so he checked on us, we got a tow to the Canadian Tire in Barrie and then our friend picked us up there and let us crash in his basement. It was a very long quiet hour while we sat on the side of the road waiting for the tow - watching the lightning off in the distance praying that it didn't come this way. So we made it back and settled at out friends place around 3:30am. Canadian Tire was great, they called us at 7:30am when they opened and had us fixed and out of there by 10:30am. After all this... all I kept thinking, is I am WAY TOO OLD for this!
Re: Worst place you've been stranded?
Oh my gawd. That sounds like a terrible end to an evening out. You guys were lucky to have been rescued! lol
Worst place? Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. My car's piston rod literally blew out of the car and when the tow truck driver told me where we were, my response was, "What the hell is a Portage la Prairie?!" lol Thankfully we got home the next day via the tow truck...but it was NOT fun!
My inlaws were on an epic road trip across the country in their truck and truck camper. They broke down somewhere in Ontario in, what they describe as "butt f-u-k nowhere". The engine blew and they were stuck there for a week. They had to bath at the gas station and they slept at the repair shop! lmao
Ummm, in the middle of a lake in Western Quebec?
We had rented a cottage near the border of Quebec, not far from Timmins. We had gone sailing (just a little Laser-type boat) a couple times that week and decided to take the boat out one more time before we left. That day was a bit overcast and quite windy. The lake also has about a billion little islands which menas the strength/direction of the wind can change quickly.
Well this boat was old and the flaps on the back to let water out were missing. DH had rigged it with some tennis balls (something he learned in sailing school). Anyway, we has just passed an island when the wind came up and we ended up capsizing. DH righted the boat but we flipped again and then the boat started to take on water. He righted it again and then there was just too much water and the boat turtled. He tried to right it again for at least another 15-20 min. Meanwhile I am trying to figure out a plan about what we could do. I grabbed the emergency kit and we both were blowing whistles, but nobody could hear us. We could see the shore and there was an island not too far off.
We finally decided to leave the boat and swim to the closest island, which took about 1/2 an hour. Because it was an overcast day, there weren't many boats out. I figured we may be there overnight and we started to take off our clothes to dry them, because it was going to be cold. About an hour later we saw two small outboard motor boats. We were finally able to flag them over and ge them to pick us up. We were both shivering from the cold (we had put clothes back on by then). They brought us back to the cottage and DH went out with some others later to tow the boat back.
Needless to say, I haven't been sailing in quite a while.
Corner of Hastings and Main in Vancouver. For those who don't know, that is probably the worst area in all of Canada for drug use and prostitution. It was horrible. I was there for two hours until I could get a hold of someone, getting harrassed and heckled by strung out people.
Runners up:
Down some logging road in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve, my husband thought his truck could drive over some snow drifts and he was wrong- we high centered. After spending a couple hours trying to dig the snow out from underneath, we walked out and hitchhiked to the nearest town to call my parents to come get us. My dad, his friend, and my husband spent all of Christmas Day digging snow out from under the truck
On the middle of the Coquihalla highway (middle of nowhere) with a not-quite-two year old after a wheel bearing seized up. Night time in January. Fortuately we had cell service (and a cell phone! The above times we didn't have one) and called my parents, who called a tow truck to haul us into town. We had to pay three times as much for a tow truck that could fit a carseat.
Oh... I have a runner up... but we weren't stranded very long... DH blew a tire on my little Saturn on the bridge on the way out to the Outer Banks. This bridges was long and flat (VERY LONG), 2 lanes, and next to no shoulder. So Dh had to change my tire on the side of the highway with no room for error. Since it was a little car, we had to unpack all our luggage on the side to get to the spare. I took a picture of this, wish I had it to share. Either way, very dangerous. Then once we got the spare on, since we had a long drive home ahead of us, we needed to find somewhere to get a new tire. This involved a lengthy drive to the nearest town with a decent sized auto shop because Saturns didn't really sell much in the US, we had a heck of a time trying to find someone with a tire for us. We made it home safe and sound though.
Oh, and I have the best place I've been stranded.... we went to the Palladium Vallarta years ago. Being the surfers that we are, we wanted to head out to Punta Mita and check the joint out. We managed to get a cab from the resort, though it took some convincing to get him to take us there (we should have taken that as the first sign). We told him to come back and pick us up in 3hours. So we wandered, sat on the beach, and hit a restaurant. And yet the cabbie never came back. So, we asked our waiter to get us a cab.... even he struggled to get us a cab... we were stranded there for the entire day as the waiter worked to get us a cab back to the resort.... it was great though... we just sat in the sun and drank beer while the waiter worked on getting us rescued.
My sister and I drove across Canada when I was 6 months pregnant with DS1. She thought it would be cool to go to a waterfall down a logging trail. We hit a rough patch in the road, and when we got to the waterfall, realized we had blown a tire. No cell service, no one around, pregnant chick and bears. And an 18 yr old girl changing a tire. And we had to drive back out the logging road on a donut. To make matters worse, we only had 1/4 tank of gas and there were no gas stations nearby. The gas light came on just as we got back to the main road and thank goodness we found a station.
When we were little our car broke down on the QEW on a Sunday night. It was back when things were still closed on Sundays (yes I am dating myself.) and there were no cells. So my parents had to walk with all 4 of us kids down the side of the highway to the next exit so they could get to a house and get help. We were 9,6,4, and 2 yrs old.
I appreciate these on some level. Mostly because I can picture them as a BC girl...
My best getting stranded story is when I lived in Alberta I took the bus about an hour north of Edmonton to a little bitty hick town to go to a wedding reception for a family friend... Well, I talked some nice person into driving me around and never did find it, well I drove by it but didn't know it because I figured it wouldn't be at that place. So, I ended up staying in a hotel overnight (for like $30 and it wasn't that bad) and seeing the family friends in the morning.
OMG both of these must have been terrifying! I can't believe no one stopped for your parents with 4 kids walking down the highway. That must have been a nightmare for them.
Nothing I have compares with the above, but my car did die in the left turn lane of a major intersection in Regina (for Mel - before #11 and Lewvan had an overpass, right in the middle of that craziness). The CAA dispatcher told me it would be an hour and I flipped on her and further explained where I was (I don't think she was in Regina) and the guy was there in 15 mins.