Knitting + Bus Ride = yuck

So I did not get much done on any knitting on my 12 hours on the bus to and from Montreal. While I did finish the back and cast on the front panels, connect them, and knit 1 cable repeat, this took me off and on the whole trip up. Why, Sarah, you ask? That's only 5 inches of knitting! And your using bulky yarn on 13's! You should have been flying! What?!?! You didn't even use the two new sets of needles you bought for the arms? Why not? You spent 1 1/2 hours and three different yarn stores to get them! I have discovered that while I can knit on the bus, I can not read. At all. While I am quite sure that the pattern is difficult, I have a hard time believing it is as hard as it seemed while reading and careening 60mph through the NH countryside. Okay, I do think the pattern is not written as well as it could be. Confusion ensues when you combing a cable pattern repeat that has decreases written into it and use that as the cable repeat for the entire garment, NOT all of which has decreases. Part of it has nothing. And part of it has increases. But...in their infinite wisdom, the designer did not simply make one set of directions for the cable repeat and one set for the various shaping needed. They combined them in a wierd way and thus led me to read repeatedly, comparing the back shaping to the front shaping (assuming that they should at least be similar). And I guessed. Yep, I had to guess how to knit the pattern. An educated guess, but still...I will be PISSED if I discover that I did it wrong. I actually may run off to knitty coffeeshop and see if anyone else has made this sweater and can guide me...