This little cutie ran up after his shopping trip to tell me they bought the Chocolate!

The West Coast Bella Girls are, in addition to being sorbet and gelato fans, baseball fans.  Our Dad was a college baseball catcher, and he passed his love of the game on to his daughters.  So, with a home game on the calendar, Heather and I were really hoping that the stars would align for us to catch the Mariners/Yankees game tonight at Safeco field, but no dice.

Here was the plan: our afternoon event was set to run from 3-6.  Since the weather was forecast to be warm, we were expecting we might go through our samples pretty quickly, so that we’d potentially be done even before 6.  Then we’d pack up the truck – we’ve gotten pretty efficient and can do our set up or tear down in less than 20 minutes! – and get on the road to the game.  We brought clothes with us, and figured we’d find somewhere safe to park the truck, change in the back, and head out!

Unfortunately, the stars turned out to be very unaligned, even though our plan seemed like such a good one.  First, was the address mishap.  I diligently typed the address of our second event into Gary the Garmin, but Gary couldn’t seem to find the location.  That was a red flag, but given Heather’s disgust with Gary, we figured maybe he was just confused.  So, we pulled out the iPhone and put the address in the google map program, and it pointed us on our way.  However, the iPhone doesn’t speak it’s directions to us like Gary does, so once I got Heather to the right road, I told her the store would be 3.6 miles ahead on the left, and went to work on my computer, doing our Twitter and Facebook updates.  I wasn’t paying attention to how long we had been driving til Heather asked how far we were, and I realized we had overshot it by a few minutes!  Darn!

So, we found a place to turn around (you can’t just flip a U-ie anywhere in our 23 foot long vehicle!) and headed back, but Heather was saying she was pretty certain the only things we had passed were trees and rock quarries.  Sure enough, when we got back to what had been given to me as the store’s address…we were right next to a run down barn and a pile of rocks.  Darn #2!

I hopped on the phone and called the store to get the correct address – next time you’re in Maple Valley, Washington, be aware that Maple Valley Hwy (the street I was told the store was on) and Maple Valley Black Diamond Hwy (the name of the street the store clerk gave me) are the same road, but on opposite sides of the freeway!  Argh!

We quickly found our way to the right address, but unfortunately again, we had to wait over 30 minutes before 4 spots in a row opened up for us to pull in and get set up (which made us all the more grateful to the stores that are able to reserve parking for us before we arrive!). Darn #3!

And lastly, the weather didn’t cooperate, or at least it wasn’t quite what we were expecting.  It didn’t rain or storm like the other day, but it definitely was much cooler and more overcast than had been forecast, and of course people are noticeably less intrigued by ice cream when it’s cold out than when it’s hot.  Darn #4!

It wasn’t all bad though.  We may have missed the Mariners’ game, but we got to hang out with these ‘boys of summer’, and I have to say, they were a pretty good substitute.  It’s a pretty good life having a job that makes other people so happy!