The driver that they are suddenly missing is Nick, because his wife finally told him to stop driving the kids around while shit faced drunk, which he is now 24/7.
He's not suddenly more busy with his kids being an awesome dad, he is now too drunk to stream most of the day and passed out in a puddle of piss and vomit the other part of the day.
Even if he was this super involved dad he pretends to be he could very easily stream in the evening/at night when the kids are in bed. He works from home with a SAHM and a nanny to take care of his kids. There isn't a better arrangement to hope for as a streamer. It's all bullshit.
Nick's excuses about the kids' schedules being a driving factor behind the cancellations do not make much sense to me, since he is obviously not driving them around after 11pm at night as a matter of course.
One possibility I considered is that Kayla has become aware of how unsafe a driver he is, either because there was an actual scare of some sort that made its way back to her, or because she finally belatedly became aware that Nick was up well into the morning, potentially getting drunk, before driving around the next day and that he is now under strict orders to be sober and well-rested before driving.
Since sometime near the start of January 2024, Nick's Locals poststreams have moved from the kitchen to an adjacent sunroom. The sunroom has the blinds down for the windows/exit to deck and in the one good shot of the door to the kitchen/living area I saw on
@elb's channel, that door was closed. The exception was a daytime Locals stream that did take place in the kitchen.
According to my clips (and memory) the last kitchen stream he did was when he made Kayla breakfast and all the alcohol bottles were laid out on the counter
A piece of speculation I had regarding this change is whether Nick is literally hiding in the sunroom and representing to Kayla that he is sleeping in there when he is actually spending at least some of his time streaming to Locals. The sunroom area is the most obvious room in the house I can think of to turn into an ersatz bedroom or sleeping area.
Before, Nick didn't really hide what was going on while on stream. He was admitting to having to drive his kids around after streaming and drinking until well into the morning, meaning at the very least he would be sleep deprived even if you assume he wasn't still drunk.
As I posted, there was at least one occasion where Nick announced he needed to leave his house at 9am to pick up his child, drank on stream for hours, talked about being drunk, and streamed until well past five in the morning. This was the same stream where he showed off the dozens of liquor bottles in arm's reach. This stream occurred in May 2023, 9 months ago, and Nick has very visibly declined since then despite claiming to be healthier than he's been in years.
Considering how delusional he sounds right now, consider me skeptical that he suddenly came to a realization all by himself that his driving practices were unsafe.
Nick had to leave to pick up one of the darn kids at 9:00am:
Nick describes a complicated scheduling situation where he has to leave his house to pick up one of his darn kids, who would inform him mid-journey whether he actually needed to be picked up. If the answer was no, Nick would turn around half-way and head back home.
"So I have to leave my house in 9am. That's in 4 hours." (05:49:00)
Let's do some math. That clip (it's on page 2052) is three minutes long and starts at 05:49:00 in the VOD. His stream is scheduled to start at 11pm Central time, but If I'm reading the Rumble UI correctly, Rumble appears to have timed the stream as starting at 11:09pm Central time; adding 5 hours and 49 minutes to that time places that clip sometime around 4:58am Central time. That's just over 4 hours before 9:00am, which comports with Nick's statement. Even if he were to have started on time as scheduled at 11pm, that's only a difference of nine minutes.
The clip below comes from the end of that night's stream, at 06:24:35 in the VOD. That's over half an hour since Nick said he had to leave in four hours at 9am, and around 5:33am if the timing on Rumble is correct. It's well past five in the morning; Nick still has a drink in his hand.
Not sure if he addressed it directly but IIRC, shortly after he thirsted after Mandy really hard on stream (this was well before "she" was outed as a likely catfish and etc.), he went on stream and basically said something to the effect of "I've been drinking too much on stream/going a bit too crazy and I need to calm down a bit," with the obvious implication that Lady Rackets had probably seen his behavior and wasn't too pleased with it.
Well it's worse than that. A former fan leaked her DMs with Nick Rekieta and Nick said himself that his lusting over Mandy on that stream was hurtful for his wife.
Combine that with how he rushed into action to try to wipe the clip off the Internet and you can easily conclude that Nick got chewed out by Kayla over it.
He probably got mocked by Kayla over it when "Mandy" was revealed to be a figment of Daniel "Buffalo Dan" Harris' imagination.
