ON THE ROAD AGAIN BUT OOPS ... NOT FOR LONG

Anyone who travels by coach knows that travel plans can never be laid in cement because the unexpected can happen at any time.  We left Yuma Wednesday morning bright and early. We noticed that our dash air conditioning wasn't working during the drive and we had to run the generator for the coach AC.  Denis figured it was a blown fuse or something simple and would check it out at our next stop.  So we drove about six hours to a Walmart for a bit of grocery shopping and an overnight stay.  The next morning, we pulled out of Walmart and heard someone honking like crazy behind us but didn't think much of it (on hindsight, we should have pulled over).  We drove a bit more and Denis noticed the engine light was on and we were overheating.  We pulled over safely and sure enough the radiator fluid was blown out all over our tow vehicle. 

We called for mobile road service and carefully drove to the next exit to find a safe place to park while we waited an hour for the mobile service guy to arrive.  The service tech found the water pump belt split in half.  Okay, you'd think, simple solution, order a new belt and install it.  Well, of course, you'd be wrong.  You can't get to the belt from underneath the rig, oh no, you've got to go through the rear bathroom under the sink.  Our tech is not a little guy and it's a pretty tight squeeze but he gets in there and finds out that the belt he has is too short.  Time to order a new belt.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we drove another mile to Little Vineyard RV Park in Deming, New Mexico for an overnight stay because we couldn't stay in the public parking lot while we were being serviced.  Driving there was fun because we're not only overheating but draining the battery.  We had to stop two times during that one mile drive to let the engine cool and battery charge. 

Had a good nights sleep and the next morning, Sam, our tech guy called, he has the new belt and is on his way over.   Now Denis has had all night to think about this and he's thinking "why did the dash air conditioning die right before the engine overheated?"  Could it be that the AC compression froze and that caused the water pump belt to break?  So when Sam gets here, Denis asks him to check the AC for movement .... NONE it's frozen.  Sam says "oh, maybe I should have thought to check that yesterday because obviously that's the problem which caused the other problem."

Sam doesn't want to install the belt because we need a new AC compressor and calls his boss to see if there's one to be found in the area.  Time passes and they tell us the part can be delivered on Thursday (now remember today is Saturday).  This puts Denis into action mode and he's on the phone and on-line doing a search for the part.  He's like a pit-bull and finally finds that Phoenix has the part.  A normal person would just over night the part but not my husband.  He tells me he'd driving to Phoenix to pick it up, kisses me goodbye and says he'll see me in about eight hours (I hate when he does that because I worry).  Now I just checked the mileage from Deming, NM to Phoenix and Google says its 4 hours and 42 minutes in light traffic. 

This post is part one of two parts.  To be continued ............................