Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : For some context:  My cousins are hosting an anniversary party.  They live some 700kms away from the hometown where my family grew up and where many still live.  I live a couple hundred kms North of that hometown.

When we first heard about the party at thanksgiving (in October), the hometown family started floating the idea to rent a charter bus from the hometown to the party.  I quickly looked at Google Maps, and saw that it would add only 26kms and only 46 minutes to swing through my city on the way instead of taking the typical route.  It would save me, however, two and half hours driving each way from where I live to meet the bus in the hometown.  (Also, to drive from where we live to the party would be 5.5 hours and just under 600km each way, or $85.17 in gas round trip, according to a road trip calculator website.)  My cousin, Brooke, who was organizing the bus immediately shot down the idea at dinner.  I initially said, if it can come through our town, we're definitely in.

The price to participate was set at $100/adult and kids were free.  Immediately, I was put off.  That would be $200 for me and my husband with no kids (which is a lot of money for us, we don't have a lot of extra room in our budget), and $200 for my cousin's family with 4 kids.  It started to seem like a really good deal for the families with kids: now they wouldn't have to drive their big vehicles that hold all their kids, their kids would have other kids to play with, there would be movies to distract them, a toilet so they didn't have to stop, and it was becoming a "booze cruise" so the parents could drink on the way.

We felt a lot of pressure to participate though, because family's important, so we committed to the idea.  Last time it was confirmed was Oct 26, and I was told they were *not* going to go through my city.  I said we would come anyway, knowing it wasn't the best financial choice for us, but that it would be an experience.

Since then, though, apparently a lot of other people from the hometown have backed out.  Yesterday, I was talking to my aunt, Allison, and she said that the price might be $140/adult now!  So, now we're paying $280 to drive 5 hours out of our way to catch a bus that we didn't really want to take in the first place, and we were never told that all these people were backing out.  And, the people organizing don't want to leave the town where the party is until 9:30am local time Sunday, which is 10:30am in our province, which means that my husband and I likely won't get home until 10pm our time on Sunday, and we both have to work Monday morning.  The cousin organizing was asked by someone else if we could leave earlier Sunday morning, but she said 9:30 was early enough.  I don't get that, even if you're tired and hungover, you're going to be on a bus for 8 hours - sleep then!

I started to feel sick about the cost and about how it was never even considered to come pick us up.  Especially when I learned that the bus does not charge by the km, but by the hour.  So, if we arrived at the party town 45 minutes later (right now they're planning on arriving extra early so the kids can swim in the hotel pool before the party), and left 45 minutes earlier Sunday morning, the bus would be rented for the same amount of time, cost the same, but save my husband and me a lot of time. 

So, I called my aunt back and expressed my concerns that it was getting too expensive.  Suddenly, she said, it wasn't going to cost $140 (which sucks, according to her), only $100 still.  And I told her that I was disappointed that the idea to drive through our city was never taken seriously (remember, it was rejected immediately by my cousin when I asked earlier).  My aunt said that the bus driver refused to drive to our city for only two people because then it wouldn't be a divided highway like the other route, and he didn't like that.  That's the reality of our province, there aren't always divided highways.  And, the bus companies in this province drive hockey players and miners everywhere without divided highways all the time, this is not out of the ordinary.  I told her still, we couldn't go on the bus, and she told me we would still have to pay our $100 each, which I think is crap.  She said everyone who backed out did so before the bus was officially booked 10 days ago.  I'm annoyed that I didn't get told 10 days ago that so many people were bailing and it was becoming more expensive.  

Anyway, I told them I wouldn't be on the bus, to count me out, and hung up the phone and went to bed feeling sad and guilty - she was really pressuring me on the phone.  She was saying things like, "If it were me, I would just come and have all the fun this weekend is going to be and then live conservatively next weekend and the next weekend and the next until January or February or whatever it took to make up the time and money!" and "As if you need to be home so much on the weekend, you probably spend most of the time in your bathrobe lounging around anyway!"  It's the holidays, money is tight, time is tight, we have to be careful with what we do.  And, we don't laze around all weekend, we are in our early 30s but we don't party a lot.  We try to take care of ourselves and our house on weekends.

I wake up to a voicemail on my phone; I check it, and it's from my aunt.  She's now saying, if it makes a difference, that they could pick us up in a small town 80kms South of where I live.  And they hope that will change our minds and make us come.  The thing is, that makes the bus take single lane highways!  But, I thought the bus refused to drive single lane highways?  Looking at Google maps, this new route they're offering is the one suggested by Google Maps, and is actually shorter in kms and time than the divided highway route they were going to take.  

So, I feel like the whole thing was being organized to work best for this one branch of the family, and my husband and I were going out of our way (literally and figuratively) to help keep the cost of this trip down for that branch, when no considerations would be made to help us out.  I don't want to pay the $200 to contribute to the bus costs, I think that's unfair, but my aunt made it sound like I don't have a choice.  When I said we couldn't take the bus, she just said, "Oh, you're just going to pay $200 for nothing?  That sucks for you guys!"

The bus was never the economical choice for us, but it was going to be where a lot of our family members were and was going to be part of the experience.  Now, though, it's mostly just that one aunt and her family, and they have a lot of kids, and we just feel like it's not fair that they booked this expensive bus knowing so few people were going.  And is our $200 really the tipping point for them?  Was it just us keeping the bus a go?  

So, am I the asshole for refusing to pay the $200 for this bus trip?  Am I the asshole for still refusing to go, even with this modified route they offered?