Running in Place

This will be my first stab at writing in this blog. Darryl has been the author of all the other entries, and I've been meaning to do this for a long time. So, yay! Here is my POV.

We had such a good winter in Indianola, Texas. We made friends, we loved the ward we were attending, the sunrises and sunsets were to die for. The wind was miserable, but everything else was delightful. Then we decided in April that we should think about moving on. We had an opportunity to go to Savannah, and this seemed like a good time to go. We had plans to meet with good friends in Panama City, Florida!

So on Monday, April 18th, we packed everything up and started our journey. About four hours in, our truck suddenly lost power. We couldn't go faster than about 45 mph on the highway. We pulled off at the next exit, which happened to be Winnie, Texas. There was supposed to be a truck stop here. Yeah, not so much. Darryl got on the phone with several mechanics, and they all said they don't do diesel, or they don't do diesel except on 18 wheelers. They kept telling him to go to the dealer. Well, as luck (not sure whether it's good or bad) would have it, there was a Dodge dealer about half a mile from where we had gotten off the highway. We stopped by, they said they could take care of it for us. There was an RV park back near where the highway was, so we brought the trailer here and dropped it off. Meanwhile, Darryl went back and dropped off the truck.

After five days of "we don't know what's wrong" and a $700 sensor repair that wasn't the actual problem, we learned that this particular shop has a bad rep (well deserved), so Darryl went and got the truck. He made the mistake of heading up to Beaumont, which is about 30 miles away. On his way back, the truck suddenly lost power again. This time he was on the side of the busy highway in a very precarious location. He called me, and I contacted AAA. I spoke with no less than four different folks from AAA. They were all very sincerely trying to get us a tow truck, but the drivers were either declining the calls, or the requests simply weren't making it to the tow truck companies. Poor Darryl was stuck on the side of the highway for over three hours. I finally had to reach out to a company myself, and within 30 minutes of my calling them, they had picked Darryl and the truck up and driven back to Beaumont, dropping them outside a Dodge dealership. Then Darryl went to a rental car place and picked up a car. An expensive daily rental car.

The truck sat for about four days before they could even look at it. It took some time for them to figure out the problem, but the repair they suggested is not something they can do, nor can any other mechanic in Texas, it seems. It has something to do with the exhaust system, and because it is part of the green emissions, it is not to be tampered with. Anyway, we finally decided we needed to have the broken part of the system replaced. Great. Let's do it. We were approved for financing, which was a huge blessing, because the cost was about $4,000, so our down payment would have been around $1,000. But, alas, NO one in the dealership's sphere of influence has the parts needed.

Eventually, Darryl had the car towed to a mechanic in Winnie. He had done some calling and some visiting, and it turns out this mechanic actually had the part. Yay! But not. In the process, they had discovered another critical repair that needed to be made. For another $1,200. They had the part, but after putting it in, they realized it wouldn't work. So they ordered one. That was supposed to be there yesterday. Or this morning. Or this afternoon...

This long story (it is day 23 of our saga as I write) is here we continue to sit. We have been promised over and over that "just another day," and we can have the truck back. Nope. Not yet.

Luckily, we have our house, so we have a place to sleep and to contain all the animals. We had to give the car back because it was costing us so much money. I can work, and I've had quite a bit, so that's been great. Every penny we can collect has to go to covering the cost of repairs. We have already paid about $1,200 and have another $4,000+ left to pay. WHENEVER the job actually gets done. And then there's the cost of the RV park, the rental car, fuel, food, etc.

Savannah still awaits. I got an email today, asking whether we had been able to get back on the road. No, still no. So I guess I'm the author of the "crap!" blog posts. I hope this will be my one and only!