Marking instead of rescuing

We had another cave rescue training planned! It was quite far in the east; Google Maps said it would take me one hour and 20 minutes to get there. That is a bit far on a weeknight, but so be it. I did decide, though, to use the electric car, as these are serious distances, and it is worthwhile trying not to emit greenhouse gases while getting there. So I booked the vehicle. I also emailed some other people who live in the west, who might want to jump in. If some of them would take the bait, I could save a lot more exhaust gases than just my own! But only one person responded, and he said that he thought it was an excellent idea, but due to circumstances he couldn't take it up.

On the evening I got ready, and then walked to where the car is parked. I tried to flag myself in, but it didn't work. What was that? By the dim light of a street lamp I found the phone number to call on my access card and phoned it. Of course I ended up in a queue.

After while I got through. I then had a discussion with a rather helpful and polite man on the other side. It had been a problem with my account again! When I booked the vehicle, I sort of assumed that if it would let me make the booking, I would have enough money on my account. That was naive. And of course they couldn't take the payment there and then. The good news was that I could cancel my booking, and I could get some of the money back.

Next time I will have to manually check that I indeed have the money on my account! It has to be there beforehand, otherwise none of this works. We have a committee meeting coming up; also quite far away. I might try again then.

But what for that evening? While sorting all of this out, so much time had passed that I didn't think it was worth going back home, switching to my own car, figuring out how to get where I needed to go (I had counted quite a lot on the GPS of the EV) and then setting off after all. I didn't want to drive all that way only to find an abandoned parking lot and having no idea where the others had gone! So I sent a message to our training officer, and decided I had an evening in. And I could put it to good use; I had quite a big pile of marking left to finish, and I could make some progress with that now. Not ideal, but making the most of a bad situation! And I'm sure the cat was happy to have my company.