Friday, November 18/2011

Another awesome sunset

The sun is shining again this morning and I can't feel anything but sorry for the folks back home who are currently fighting temperature of -27C and piles of snow.  I sure don't miss the Canadian winters!!
We are headed into Moab today to pick up a motor mount for the jeep and do a bit of shopping.
We picked up the jeep parts and took them over to the little garage we had taken the bus to the last time we were here in Moab to have its hitch welded.  John is hoping they will be able to change the mount and we will be good to go in no time.  (That statement alone should have sent off waning bells !!)
We found the shop, still open for business and were immediately put into a bay for repair. The owner Joe, has his son Jair working there and I mentioned what a different sort of name that was.  He told me that all his kids have the initial J.W. and after a while, it was getting difficult to find names stating with "J" so Jair, it was!!
John had asked Jair to replace the motor mount on the driver's side of the vehicle and once the hood was lifted and the motor moved, John noticed that the passenger side mount was broken as well!!  (OMG, we travelled all those trails in the dark the other night with not one, but two broken motor mounts!! Is that not just asking for the fan to go through the radiator!!)  Thank Heavens for a single blue ratchet strap cause that was the only thing stabilizing the motor and that was put on in the dark, in the middle of the trail the other might!!
Another mount was found in town and was delivered. In the meantime, Jair crawls under the jeep and begins laughing and wondering just how in the hell we managed to get this jeep even to the shop as he has discovered that there was nothing (no bolts, no screws, not even a piece of tape) holding the transmission mount in place!!  Apparently all the bolts had jiggled loose and are now lying somewhere on the desert trails ..... And The Gong Show Continues!!!!
Ignorance is Bliss because had I known just how bad our situation was the night we spent out on the trails trying to get close to civilization, I would have been a total basket case and may have vowed never to set foot anywhere near that Jeep again let alone ride in it!!
3 hours later, the fixing was done and we were on our way to finish the shopping, get more gas and stop at our favorite spring to fill the water jugs.
Back at the bus, we were both counting our lucky stars that the jeep made it home safe and sound.  I thought I didn't need the "Four Powers" the other night but obviously they wee working their magic without me knowing it!!
With the jeep fixed John is looking for another trail to do tomorrow - God, please save us from ourselves!!