Gerwyn Price suffered a travel nightmare as he bowed out of the European Darts Championship at the first hurdle.
The Iceman was hoping to make an impact in Germany, in his quest for another PDC major.
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After a somewhat dramatic trip to Dortmund, the Welshman slumped to a 3-6 defeat to Daryl Gurney.
In the match, Price was only able to hit three of 17 doubles on the night against the Northern Irishman.
And he would later offer a decent reason behind a below-par showing.
The Iceman revealed a gruelling trip to the tournament which included lost luggage and a hotel fire alarm.
He wrote on Facebook after his exit: “Left for the airport and filled my car up with diesel and the card machine broke down at the garage — 2:30am… 20 minutes later finally all sorted.
“Driving to the airport and the postcode given took me 10 minutes out the way but finally got to the meet and greet car park.
“Hours before my flight, check-in staff arrived 35 minutes late but got through security just in time. Flight was great.
“Sat at the train station on platform 4 which I thought was platform 5 for a train from Dusseldorf to Dortmund.
“Train pulls up behind me on platform 5 so I rush and forget my case, leaving it on the platform. Luckily, I have an Apple tracker so my phone flashed up saying it was no longer close to me.
“Fifty minutes later after coming back, luckily it’s still there and I have my case back. Next train 45 minutes later — happy days.”
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He added: “Finally arrive in Dortmund and get a taxi to the hotel. Driver decides he only takes cash so I searched everywhere for a cash machine but nothing. Managed to scrape enough out of the shrapnel in my bag.
He continued: “Check in at the hotel which was like a hostel. Tried to change hotels but nothing as it’s a football weekend, next morning go down for breakfast at 9:54am, breakfast finishes at 10am and everything’s gone, lush.”
“Anyway, gets to 1pm and the fire alarm goes off, everyone outside for a while, some tool smoking in the room like, turn up to darts thinking nothing else could possibly go wrong, yep I was s**** and lost.
“Get back to my hotel p***** off, but thinking oh well home tomorrow and book a flight home to Heathrow tomorrow morning at 7am and realise I flew from Birmingham. What a blast in 2 days.”
It wasn’t all bad news, though, as Price also admitted one person did take pity on him during a separate predicament.
He added in a reply: “And I didn’t mention when I had food this afternoon which was a 15min walk, the card machine wasn’t working there either and he wanted me to walk back and get cash, yeye. On the plus side I had €25 worth of food for free.”
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Gurney went on to beat Ross Smith in the second round as he attempts to claim glory in the tournament.
Last year it was won by Ritchie Edhouse but this year could finally see Luke Littler usurp Luke Humphries and become World No.1.
The pair are on a collision course currently and set to meet on Sunday in the quarter-finals if they beat James Wade and Cameron Menzies, respectively.
