The next morning I woke up and had a very nice and very early breakfast at the hotel. From there I made my way towards the train station for the 8am train to Geilo. I called Linda from the train and explained my situation and told her I was going to be a little late but make it there eventually. I was greeted at the train station by Thore and driven to the Ski School on the other side of the valley. I spent the rest of the day being shown around the town, taken out to lunch, having dinner bought for me and generally treated very well. They offered to sort out my visa, a place to live, free gym access, very good pay (and an advance if I need it) and they even offered, if I take the job, to pay for the extra expenses I incurred getting there. They made it very hard to say no. So I didn't. I guess that hard work back in Canada actually paid off. I took a train back to Oslo and then an overnight bus back to Stockholm. Alex’s car is still in Drammen.
As ashamed as I am to admit it… it turns out I had fueled the car with ethanol instead of gasoline. In my defense it isn’t clearly labeled as ethanol here and when I pulled up to a pump that gave me a choice between diesel and E85 I thought “well I know it doesn’t take diesel!” I was actually pretty lucky the damage wasn’t much worse. It could have eaten away at the whole engine and basically screwed the car completely whereas I escaped with replacing the fuel pump, draining and tank and flushing the engine which I expect will ultimately leave me out of pocket something like AU$2000 instead of AU$20,000
That is a pretty rough blow to the financial situation all the same but ultimately, I look at it like this: I have a sweet job in Norway starting in a little over a month. I have handed in my resignation at the Hard Rock Cafe, booked a flight to London in 3 weeks to get my board bag (and to catch up with Ben of course) and right now I am on my way back to Oslo to get the car.
Miss Adventure is a cruel woman. Things have a way of working out in the end though.
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