Boy oh boy. Nothing is easy when you're us.

Now a simple trek to Russellville and back has even inflicted its wrath on Echo Sports. In the past our travel stories have come from a couple journey's to Cleveland, Miss. and our epic non-stop trip to Valdosta, Ga. this football season in a Cavalier.

But now, a different kind of travel disaster took place on the simple 45 minute drive to and from Russellville.

It began quite innocently. It just so happened both blinkers in my wonderful vehicle happened to stop working somewhere between my humble abode on Clifton Street and I-40. They were working fine when I took off, but on the interstate I discovered they were no longer blinking.

Great. But this is no big deal, my blinkers seem to have a history of doing this, I am used to it.

So we roll into the Tucker Coliseum on the campus of Arkansas Tech University problem-free and take our seats for a wonderful night of basketball.

I mean, really, you couldn't ask for a much better couple of games than those that were played Monday night. You can, however ask for a better group of fans.

Tech has some classy students. And before our travels ended up being a huge ordeal, I planned on devoting a full blog post to them. I still plan on doing that, but maybe later in the week.

So, after the great games and conducting my final interviews it was time to pack up and hit up the McDonald's down the street. After waiting an insane amount of time for some fairly simple sandwiches, Josh and I were back en route to Conway.

But this is where the problems really started pouring on. Literally.

The drought that has plagued Arkansas for the better part of like two or three months chose the best time possible to end. The headlights, wipers and windshield of a 20-year old Chevrolet Celebrity just don't make for great driving in the pouring rain in the middle of the night.

Really, the headlights and windshield don't make for great night driving anytime or anywhere, but when it's not pouring down rain I can handle it.

As the rain let up a little and it appeared it would be smooth sailing the rest of the journey, a common occurrence that has plagued my car for years as it has been passed down through the family, struck once more. The alternator light came on.

My immediate thought was that the belt had somehow popped off. This seems to happen a hell of a lot and it can cause some problems.

For those of you not schooled in the world of mechanics or not schooled in driving an '86 Celebrity, the alternator is the thing that keeps the battery good and charged.

So when the belt pops off of that puppy, the battery is no longer being charged and you're basically running on the battery by itself. I've done this before, and I've actually made it from Conway to Hot Springs doing so.

Well, that trip from Conway to Hot Springs was during the day.

Turns out headlights and windshield wipers take a little more power than we had. So, of course, just as the rain started pouring harder than it had all night the wipers start slowing down and the lights start dimming.

This was clearly not cool. I pretty much conceded to my car at this point and luckily we were near an exit. The Menifee exit, eight miles outside of Conway. (Oh so close).

The car went ahead and died somewhere on the off ramp, but we were able to coast to the stop sign. This is where the brute strength of two college sportswriters comes into play as Josh and I were forced to push the mighty beast across the street.

Fearing losing the car in a ditch which we could barely see due to the rain and extreme darkness, we pushed it as far off the road as we thought necessary. Then after letting some fine residents of Menifee know that we were OK and had someone on the way, I placed a call to my roommate and sister to come get us.

Everyone who has followed Echo Sports for the last three years knows that we're not just freakin' the greatest of navigators. Throw on top of our sub-par navigation skills the fact that we're in a dead car in a strange place in the middle of the night in pouring rain and we're going to provide some bad directions.

That we did. And shortly after 1 a.m. we were finally retrieved.

But that's not where it ends. After the long night I was in no mood to make a full update of getoffus.com, so I just posted the Sugar Bears story and a photo along with my editor's note letting you all know the updates would be coming Tuesday.

I didn't think updating the site completely on Tuesday would be much of a problem. I figured I would get up this morning, call a wrecker, get that puppy towed to a shop, get it fixed and be on my way.

What was I thinking. I get up and call the wrecker, and a few minutes later I get a call from the driver of the tow truck.

"Can you explain to me where exactly you were."

I did.

"Well, your car isn't here, then."

Awesome.

I try to call the state police in Morrilton to see if they had my car impounded. The number I found is not operational.

Great.

So then I dig up the number to the Menifee Police Department. It's maybe 11 a.m. at this point and the Menifee court clerk picks up the phone. She says she doesn't know if any cars had been towed and that the police chief is gone, but he'll be back within the hour.

Well, Josh and I made a return trip to the scene and the car was indeed gone. So then I finally hunted down a number for the highway patrol. They hadn't impounded a car from Menifee in at least a month. The County Sheriff was next on my call list, they hadn't impounded a car from the area since November.

One more call to the Menifee PD and the chief still isn't back in the house.

Now, I've pretty much figured my car was stolen.

And to be honest, I wasn't to tore up about it. If someone wants a friggin' '86 Celebrity bad enough to steal it when it's not even running, they can have it.

During all the phone calls and down time in the search I did manage to get a couple photo galleries uploaded. So the entire day wasn't lost.

The day got a little brighter just after 2 p.m. when the Chief finally called back, too. He informed me that he did tow a car off the freeway this morning. (If he towed it off the freeway, I'm curious as to who put it on the freeway as Josh and I pushed it to the side of a highway, nothing free about it.)

Anyways, he told me it was at Allan Love's in Morrilton. Spectacular, nothing like a trip to Morrilton to retrieve a vehicle.

A couple calls to the body shop failed, but Josh and I actually found the place without much effort. Once there I asked if I could get my alternator belt replaced so I could actually drive the puppy home.

That was no problem, until it came time to actually came time to try and fix it.

This turned out to be somewhat of an ordeal and we were losing daylight.

But it did result in a couple hours of great conversation with Allan Love himself.

Finally the mechanic conceded and asked if it would be OK if he just continued to work on it in the morning. I said that was fine and handed over the keys.

That's pretty much where we are now. My car still in Morrilton and after just relaxing this evening, I finally got up the strength to update the Web site.

Now, I'm going to encourage everyone to go buy a shirt so I can pay for the repairs and towing.