The weather made a beautiful summer around here this year. Drier than usual, but not as deathly hot as it was inland. It would have been the perfect season to get the undeveloped side of the farm prepped for a fairly comfortable winter.
Except things kept going wrong. And getting delayed. And delayed. And delayed.
Blocked from every angle and extremely unproductive. The big pickup, the one with the 5th wheel hitch, the faithful Dodge that I’ve put well over 100K miles on, refused to start one morning in July. Not long after I’d hauled the first, smaller 5th wheel across the street & into the pasture.
It’d been having occasional bouts of coughing & stalling out, like it had water in the fuel or a dirty filter, (both of which I checked for, nada). It did the same thing six, seven years ago, ended up being a fairly inexpensive mechanical fuel pump, a lift pump, that fed the fuel injector. But it could also have been the fuel injector. I had just set aside money to rebuild it in 2011 when I sold a really nice 4 year old to an eventing home in Michigan ..
But then things went sideways. And all plans got put on indefinite hold.
I did get the new back tires at the time, but the fuel injector took a back seat to fighting for my furchildren and my livelihood.
So ABB Dodge, (reference to the plate), was out of commission as of July. Didn’t occur to me that my mechanic might not have room for it, so I called AAA and had it hauled in. And three hours later dropped it back off in the pasture. Not only did my mechanic not have room for it, no reputable place in town had either a shot at even looking at it for 3 weeks, or had space to let it sit & wait to be seen. So I blew a AAA tow for nothing.
Three weeks turned into six, my guy & his shop took their vacation & hauled to Sturgis, came back in time to get hit with the eclipse crowd & craziness, then with Labor Day tourist breakdowns. Finally, he had a space for it, so, another AAA call & ABB is on his way to Russ’ place.
And sat for another three weeks while everything they looked at in the queue ‘was more broken than we thought’.
And so the summer’s gone. And the heavy, 32’ 5th wheel, the ancient Airstream project trailer, the bus and a ton of other stuff that required the truck to move is still stuck on the wrong side of the street. With the interim owners getting understandably impatient and weather starting to turn.
When ABB started his vacation in July, we were left with only one running vehicle, my step mother’s Forester. Which I had been babying since last fall when the head gasket started to go. Kept an eye on the temp & the radiator filled, it was doing ok, we just needed to coordinate & trade off for laundry, water runs & groceries. A nuisance, but no big deal.
Then one day, after ABB had finally gotten in to Russ’ lot, it heated up. Topped the radiator, no problem. Then the next morning it got hot again. Trouble.
I let it cool completely and checked the oil. Green radiator fluid in the oil. Dammit. The gasket had finally blown all the way through. So I was stuck in town, 15 miles from home. It still started. And ran on the flat within town ok. But I couldn’t get home to do supply runs. Had to find out of the way places in town to park & sleep.
The one friend out near home was also down to one vehicle, she & her husband were juggling like crazy to get feed for the animals and him to work. The other friend I usually trade favors with was out of town for a month, so I was stuck for two weeks trying to catch rides every few days to drop off supplies at home. Fun times.
My Toyota truck has been sitting for a couple of years, waiting for me to find the extra cash to replace the starter, (and by now, the battery). Was gonna have to move it anyway, and with the other vehicles down, getting it running was becoming an imperative, so I made an appointment with a Toyota specialist, (Russ’ shop is still slammed), to use the last AAA tow to drag it down on the 28th. Three days from now.
Last Wednesday ABB was finally fixed. Yay!!! Started to a minimal key turn as usual, purred like a very big cat. But it had rained hard enough to make decent mud, so moving the the big trailer was a no go until the area dried out again.
Then Friday it started coughing & sputtering, just like it had before. Saturday AM it started fine, ran nice all the way up to the law library and then refused to start again. So I’m stuck in town. Again. But this time with no running vehicle to tuck away and sleep in. Til Russ opened Monday morning.
Staying over in the law library is a no-no. Has the potential to get my key and access to the internet & research for my remaining appeal cut off. And it’s not going to be long before someone notices that ABB hasn’t moved since Saturday and tow it off. And at this moment, I couldn’t ransom him. I can’t lose him. I don’t know anybody with a 5th wheel hitch. He’s it to get that stuff hauled across the street.
Called Russ’ shop first thing yesterday morning & left a message. Thinking about it, I seem to remember that we’d gotten a defective pump the first time it went out all those years ago, too, and mentioned that in the message. No call back. Checked back just before lunch, he wasn’t handy. And still hasn’t called back. I hope to hell he’s already ordered the replacement pump. And thank FSM the law library is only about half a mile, on fairly level ground, from the shop, because I need that last tow to get the Toyota hauled in.
Oh, and because it never rains, but it pours, I heard from my appeals lawyer. The state supreme court has ‘declined’ to hear the rest of the appeal, the part I didn’t win before. So it looks like getting the rest of my horses back by showing all the bias and unlawful actions that county took in stealing them is toast.
Gawd, I’m tired.
Tuesday, Sep 26, 2017 · 7:32:13 PM +00:00
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FarWestGirl
Seems like I spend a lot of time working close to the edge the past few years, but this one’s got me really up against it. I hate like hell to ask, especially with everything else going on in the world, but if anyone can spare a little, it would be hugely appreciated. I’m really out of options right now.
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