Go to the desert they say. It’ll be fun they say.......
The following adventure has become known amongst our friends here in Udhailiyah as “A Day to Remember”. It’s certainly not one that I will be forgetting nor will Michelle ever let me.
Let me set things up for you. Thursday afternoon the office empties out and I’m getting the last few procedures and calculations done for yet another weekend cement job. Michelle is getting the kids ready at home for a Thursday evening bonfire in the back quarter of our little camp. Give the rig a quick call to see how their job timing is working out and they say that they won’t need me until Saturday morning at the earliest. Sweet deal, Friday off! Remember – weekends here are Friday/Saturday. Kid #2 is also performing with her Zumba class at International Night on Friday evening as well as one of our friends, her kids and another one of our friends kids. Points for dad for actually making it to an event for once. It’s also one of the rare weekends when all three of the husbands from our group of friends are off at the same time so we need to make it a good one. Weather is also a lot more bearable than it was a month ago. High’s in the mid/upper 20’s, low’s in the mid/upper teens. Like a perfect summer day in Canada…but it’s the middle of November in Sand Land.
So anyways, our kids have been bugging us to go sliding down the dunes nearby. Schedules never seem to work out and it’s not exactly someplace that you want to go alone. Safety in numbers. So at the bonfire on Thursday evening we come up with this excellent plan to convoy out around lunch time on Friday. Going to work out perfectly – Michelle and I needed to get 13 mile runs in, on friend was golfing and another was taking a kid to taekwondo. Perfect plan for a perfect day. Michelle and I get our runs done, get cleaned up, get a lunch packed, load up with water, emergency kit, shovels, crazy carpets, etc. This is right around the time when Michelle says “alright honey, just don’t do anything stupid and get stuck ok?”. I say “No problem, look at all this stuff I have to get me out of a bind. Relax.”
We meet our friends at the commissary, get a couple last minute items and head out east of town. We start driving and I begin to wonder where the crazy Scotsman is leading us. I’ve been out here and it’s a bloody barren wasteland. Ever heard of an outer rim planet named Tatooine? Same same. Drive for about 20 minutes and hang a quick left onto a skid road. Still no dunes. Pretty sure the Scotsman has lost his mind. Then POOF out of nowhere – mountains of sand. Soft and fluffy. Just like powdered sugar but way more abrasive. We drive to the base of a 30ft dune and start unloading kids. Up the dune they go and start sliding down…or at least attempting to. Sand has a little bit different friction factor than snow. Should have maybe sprayed the crazy carpets with WD-40 or something. So after about 10 minutes of doing this I decide why slide on the sand when you can drive on the sand. I have Nissan’s Patrol. This is Nissan’s flagship SUV with 4x4 and a little button that says “Sand”. Just put it in 4x4, press the ‘sand’ button and slam down on the pedal on the right. What could go wrong? I hadn’t made it half way down the dune before Michelle started saying something. I was too excited to actually listen. I do remember our one friend saying something about being careful though. I thought to myself “I’m Canadian. I learned to drive on snow and ice. I’ve been stuck before. I know how to get out. I have shovels. I have ramps. Let’s give’r!”
I slam down on the gas and fly around the side of the dune and go roaring up to the top. Michelle is standing there with her hands on her hips shaking her head. I’ve got the windows down and a smile from ear to ear. I feel like a god amongst men. What a great day to be alive. I’ve just shown my wife that driving on sand is no big deal. Rational thinking has now left my mind (I’m a god amongst men, remember?) and I stop the vehicle. Fatal mistake #1. As soon as I stop I feel the Patrol sink a good 3-4 inches. I’m already in 4x4 so I try going forward. No dice. Drop another 2 inches. Throw it into reverse and try to reverse out. Drop another 2 inches. Not good. Hop out and drop tire pressure to 20 psi. This has worked before; it’s gotta work now. Hop back in the Patrol. Throw it in 4-LO, try to inch back. Nothing. Try to inch forward. Nothing. Try the ramps. Nothing. Hop out again and I’m already buried up to frame. This has gone from bad to worse. Out come the shovels. I dig out what I can but it seems like whatever progress I make on one side of the vehicle gets lost on the other side of the vehicle. I’m slowly digging a grave for the Patrol. Next thing I know I can’t open the doors anymore because they’re below the level of the sand. This is now getting serious. Pull all of the heavy items out from the Patrol and start looking for wood or rocks that can be used for traction. Absolutely nothing is working. The Scotsman now takes off to look for a Bedouin to pull us out. Oh but wait…it’s Friday (Holy Day) and he’s probably in town at the mosque. Ya know that comedian, Bill Engvall, who says “here’s your sign”? Well I look up to the heavens and realize that I’ve now received my sign. Maybe this wasn’t the best Friday activity that we could have done. I dunno. Michelle disagrees and says that I’m just an idiot.
We’ve now exhausted all of our options and it’s 3pm. The kids have to get back to town in order to get ready for International Night. The Patrol is in pretty dire circumstances. The Scotsman can see a wellsite move taking place across the wasteland and he can see a loader. We load up all 7 kids and send them on their way home with our Portuguese friends. Michelle and I hop in with the Scotsman and his lovey wife and head over to the wellsite move that’s in progress. We track down the Filipino truck push and he’s willing to help. We tell him that we’re going to rip back to UDH, drop the wives and come back. By now I’m feeling like the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. How did this go so wrong so fast? What was I thinking? Why did I even try to do that? Why did I stop on the very top of the dune? Why didn’t I just listen to my wife in the first place? Why did I have to go and wreck a perfect day? The 20 minute drive back to town felt like an eternity.
Just as we’re coming into town we get a call from our friend who took all the kids with her. She has called her friend whose husband basically lives in the desert. It just so happens that he’s home this weekend as well and has the perfect truck for pulling me out. I’ve never met the guy but apparently he’s already loaded up and waiting for us to meet him. Drop the wives off and mine tells me to sleep in the Patrol if we can’t get it free. She’s not joking. I stare blindly at the ground, solemnly nod my head and answer “Yes dear”. We head over to meet up with my Portuguese friend who’s waiting with the beast of a truck and get the convoy ready again. The driver is sitting there with a huge grin on his face and I ask him “did you see the pictures?”. He chuckles and responds “no problem”. I’m thinking to myself “sure buddy, I was saying the same thing three hours ago”. So off we go; almost sounds like the start of a bad joke “Four guys head into the desert – a Canadian, a Scotsman, a German and another from Portugal.”
We get back out to the Patrol’s grave site and without hesitation or warning. This guy goes roaring up onto the dune with my Portuguese friend sitting shotgun, rips around a bit and then stops about 100m from my vehicle. Now I’m thinking we’re really screwed. “Shouldn’t have stopped buddy” I think to myself. The Scotsman and I park on hard ground below the dune and walk up. Our rescue driver is now surveying my situation so I ask him “you ever seen it this bad before?” and he says “yes, sometimes even me, no problem”. There’s those two magical words again “no problem”. Might as well be saying “mafi mushkilla, inshallah”. Anyways, I swear the Patrol has sunk another 2-3 inches in the hour we’ve been gone. Pretty sure this is quicksand of some description. Regardless, I start digging (again) and get as much sand as possible away from the tires. Meanwhile, our rescue driver has deflated his tires to 15 psi and has pulled out a 100ft tow strap. We get everything hooked up and he gives me the instructions on what I need to do. I’m still pretty sure that he’s going to get planted trying to pull me out. He starts pulling, I start driving and the next thing I know the Patrol has been resurrected from its shallow grave. Praise God, I’m not sleeping in the desert tonight! He unhooks his side of the tow strap and I begin getting everything loaded back into the Patrol. I then sheepishly drive back down to the bottom of the dune and park on the hard ground. Hindsight being 20-20 – I should have gone for a really good rip now that there was someone there to pull me out. After a couple minutes the Scotsman and I look around; our rescue driver is nowhere to be seen. Neither is our friend from Portugal. The out of nowhere the truck re-appears and flies over top the dune and straight down the slip face. I’m sure that the rear tires were off the ground. Meanwhile I can hear my Portuguese friend giggling in the front seat. Guaranteed he’s having more fun than a kid at Disney World. GUARANTEED! After a few more minutes of joy riding we pulled out the air compressors and started pumping up our tires for the journey home. Remember that “god amongst men” statement from earlier? Ya that title is no longer mine. It has been firmly affixed to my rescuer. There are absolutely no words to describe the sense of relief I now felt. No words whatsoever.
We left just as the sun was setting and made our way back to UDH. I got home just in time to grab a quick shower, wash away sand from places that should never see sand, get dressed in my most Canadian looking clothing (red/black flannel shirt and jeans) and took kid #2 to International Night right on time, just as planned. Michelle was still less than impressed but I got upgraded from sleeping in the car to sleeping on the couch.
It wasn’t until we’d been home for about half an hour when a newly created Facebook group titled “A Day to Remember” was created by our Portuguese friend. That’s when the pictures and videos started coming in. I’m pretty sure that everyone involved in my little fiasco (or SNAFU for a better term) will never forget about this. Lots of life lessons were learned by the kids on this day. I may have learned a couple as well.
I clearly remember saying during the first journey back to UDH “I have done a lot of stupid things in my life but this one has definitely got to be in the top 5”.
End of the day it all worked out alright but it could have been much worse. I really didn’t want to sleep in the desert all alone.
And it will be remembered.....
