Saving and Spending Pennies...lol

Trying to cut costs can sometimes be a frustrating business as I discovered yesterday.....wanting to save on the e-toll fees I said to NiQi and Johan that we should look at the alternative route to Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and measure if at all it is shorter in distance than driving along the N1, M1 roads.  So between the two of them they devised a route that theoretically should have saved us both time and money.  NiQi saved it to her iPad the evening before and we were all set for our journey thee next morning.  We left home at 5.45am, just as dawn was breaking.  There was a gentle drizzle in the air and with my window open the air was fresh and crisp, just right for our trip.  I was feeling quite chipper and also excited that we were going to be saving money and hopefully arrive earlier than we usually do....BWAHAHA, that was my first mistake, don't ever think you are going to come out tops over someone like SANRAL, they know their business and are probably sitting laughing away at my stupidity.

To put you clearly in the picture, at 7.05am we hadn't yet made it past Centurian and by this stage the fine drizzle was a downpour.  The roads were bumper to bumper obviously filled with poor souls like me who are trying to save a buck and ending up pulling out their hair.  If the traffic had at any stage been free flowing I would maybe not have minded so much, but the continual stopping and starting, waiting at red robots and moaning at the clever so and so's who kept driving up the side of the road and pushing in at the front, left me dumbstruck.  By 8 am we had finally made it to Zwartkop, which is only a few kilometers further up the road, and both NiQi and I were estimating by when we might finally make it to the hospital.  She phoned the ward to let one of the sisters know that we were stuck in traffic but we were definitely on our way.  BUT at some point we both realized we needed the loo and  NiQi was trying to find the most comfortable position to sit in without her bladder having excess pressure put on it.  I said to her she must think of something else and then the feeling would go away, but the pressure was definitely getting greater and with nothing on the R101 that looked anything like a stop with a loo, she had no choice but to nip it in.  Slowly but surely we were edging our way closer and about 20km from the hospital we came across an area that had obviously had a vast amount of rain...the river was a torrent of water and with a dip in the road ahead of us, it was like a ford.  By this time it wasn't raining anymore and I had my window wide open......do you know what's coming????   Everyone had slowed down on both sides to go through the water passing over the road and as NiQi sat up to try and take a photo of the river with her phone, I drove through it myself.  As I did, I suddenly became drenched from a wave that hit me blasting through my open window...water was in my eyes, all over my hair, on my clothes and my seat.  We both had such a shock that NiQi didn't get her photo and we both burst out laughing.  I hadn't given my open window a thought on going through the water and didn't dream that someone coming from the other side would drive through so much faster causing such a wave.  We laughed and laughed and then both remembered we needed the loo desperately so tried to hold our laughter down to little giggles while I tried to dry myself off.  Desperate times call for desperate measures and NiQi was frantically 'Googling' to find a garage close to our route so we could have a wee break...excuse the pun...

Not too much further on we made a quick detour and found a small garage.  Only one loo was available, so while NiQi sat and sat and sat for what was an age, I stood outside and hopped from one leg to another till she had finished.  Needless to say, she called out to me that there was no loo paper, so I scratched around in my bag for the packet of tissues I always have with me and passed them through the door to her.  What did I see sitting on top of the cistern when I turned round to flush the toilet...yip, a loo roll....  Anyway, now we were relieved   and feeling so much better with the world we made our way back to our route and continued to the hospital.  We were so hopelessly late and Johan had been constantly messaging to ask if we were there yet...  Finally we arrived at the hospital at 10.11am - almost 4 1/2 hours after we had left home.  Needless to say, SANRAL will be billing me for our return trip as I didn't have the energy to repeat the same trip home.  Sunday we have to make our way back to hospital and we are going to try the same route...just to see how long it takes us on a non week day.....