These photos should have been posted yesterday, however in our rush to pack stuff to take from the trailer to the hotel I didn’t pack a suitable USB chord.
I jacked up the trailer to release it from the truck and the operator pulled the truck forward and onto the bed of the tow truck with a winch. A fifth wheel coupler was then added to the boom at the back of the tow truck, and the trailer connected up.
Above is us just arriving at the dealership before anything was off-loaded. Our first (and hopefully last) ride in a tow truck.
Finished up spending the night in a hotel, not the worlds cheapest at about twice the rate we normally pay. We were lucky as, after explaining our predicament, they were happy to extend our check-out time from 11 AM to mid afternoon if we needed it.
Woke up to a sunny day and an included hot breakfast, good for me, bad for Lyn! Lyn is trying to shed a few more pounds, while much to her annoyance I have lost too many pounds, and am trying to keep the weight steady.
I checked in with the dealership, and the good news was that they were working on the truck. It should be ready by mid afternoon provided a road test doesn’t reveal any additional internal damage. My original assessment was correct, the hoses carrying the transmission fluid from the gearbox to the front radiator had self destructed. As I had stopped the truck within a few seconds of the problem occurring I was fairly certain I had limited the damage caused.
With nothing better to do we headed off to find a couple of geocaches. Only problem was, the GPS was back at the trailer and although I could have used the phone, it was out of charge and the cable was back at the trailer! Plan B, get the coordinates of the caches, enter them into google earth, remember the image and go hunting. It worked, we got about one and a half miles walking in and found two caches. One cleverly disguised as an Idaho potato!
After the walk we headed back to the hotel for some time in the hot tub and pool. By the time we got dried off it was time to phone the dealership again. The truck was ready. As this was a dealership the price was way more expensive than you would expect for “a couple of hours labour and some parts”, unless the labour rate down here is $250 per hour. Anyway it had to be done, hence the title of the blog which seems to be my favourite saying these days. Previously my favourite saying was “What are they going to do, fire me?” Well we all know how that transpired!!
We grabbed some lunch, hooked up the trailer and headed off 24 hours late. In a lot of respects this was a good place for this to happen (if there ever is a good place for this type of thing) as we really didn’t have too much planned for our next destination, Arco Idaho.
I must admit to being a little nervous every time I accelerated up a hill, waiting for the lines to blow again! We took this picture as we passed the “incident” site, it was easy to find as I had marked the position on the GPS and also the large oil stain on the hard shoulder was a bit of a give away. As you can see it is a little remote.
We made it to the camp site, which is a little less remote than the last two…. just. WiFI is good though.