Trip From Hell On the Road to Heavens Gift

This trip is turning out to be a pretty challenging one. We left yesterday and was pretty uneventful until about hour number ten. Drain Water Separator warning message comes on. If you don’t know what this is, well it is particularly important for diesel engines to remove any moisture that might accumulate in the fuel. A few minutes later the maintenance needed limp home mode comes on and shuts down certain features on the truck. What do you do in the middle of West Texas seventy or so miles from any form of civilization?

Well, you take the nearest exit and find a depression in the gravel side road and go underneath the truck and drain off the water in the collector. I drained off about a half cup from a collection system that is supposed to hold about 6 teaspoons. Troubling? I think so, but I told Jen that it should do it. She did figure out that it was a lot on her own as she started looking up info about the alarm. The alarm did reset, but came back about 10 minutes later. So, we stopped, I thought about going back underneath, but we decided to just start it up again and see. Sure enough, the alarm did not reappear and we drove the rest of the way to Las Cruces, had a nice meal and checked into the hotel thinking the problem was behind us now. Oh, how we were wrong.

Woke up early, went to Starbucks for coffee and a breakfast sandwich, fueled up, and hit the road…which lasted approximately eighteen minutes, where we had to detour for an accident with fatalities that had the westbound lanes closed. We pulled off and were literally about the tenth car to move if we were ever allowed to leave. We sat there for about an hour, when we decided we would backtrack and go north a way and come back to the interstate a few miles beyond where we currently were. So off we went. About ten miles from getting back to Las Cruces the Water Separator warning light came back on. We headed to Starbucks to decide what to do. I thought about draining it off some more, but something inside me told me take it to a shop to have checked out. The Ford dealer amazingly got us in and we were back on the road with new fuel filters and water drained off. Relieved, off we went happy and a couple hundred dollars lighter in the pocket. We made it to Hatch New Mexico, which was actually pretty cool. We both were glad that the misfortunes of others had redirected us to this cool place filled with one of my favorite things…Hatch Green Chilies.

Forty-eight miles to get to Deming and Interstate 10 enroute to Kate and Joshua and our newest soon to be granddaughter. Excitement was once again alive in the truck. But wait, ten minutes later, you guessed it, Drain Water Separator with the limp mode wrench symbol. We pulled into another truck stop, I got under the truck and literally drained off a good cup before giving up that it just needed to go back to Las Cruces. Outside of my frustration of the trip being derailed once again, I’m beginning to realize that some of this may be due to me not showing the love and care for the truck as I should have been giving it. In other words, regular draining of the water separator and routine changing of the fuel filters. Believe me, when this is all over, the truck is going on the calendar maintenance care and I will stick to it. We called the dealership and said we were headed back and should be there in 30 minutes barring the truck not shutting down. We also called ahead and made reservations to spend the night and check in immediately, an apparent perk due to our status with Marriott.

Truck delivered and a shuttle ride later, we were at the hotel and in our room. I’d like to say we were waiting patiently to hear word of the scan on the truck for hard codes or with a plan to rid of us of this repeating scenario. Wait, wait, wait and wait some more. Finally, I give them a call only to discover that there is no way they will get to it tonight and probably not in the morning and were hoping to work on it Saturday afternoon. After our immediate let down on top of our let down, we decided that we needed to make the most of a bad situation and maybe go see a movie, eat at a brew pub to maybe fulfill my quest on the best amber ale and fish and chips combo in the United States. The folks at Bosque Brewing Comp. were very gracious and understanding and made sure to serve exactly what we wanted at the normal price. Seriously, was good and a moment to unwind a little, that is until I had to walk back and ruin the amber ale and fish and chips float now in my belly with exercise.  I need it yes, but didn’t want it right now. Of course, Jeni had a plan and got vanilla ice cream and a root beer for Black Cows and continue our refresh of The Umbrella Academy. Yay, back on my strict dietary needs and enjoyment. So here we are sitting, wondering, and trying to decide all the scenarios that could happen, but more importantly, just what does tomorrow hold in store. I will come back and add to this tomorrow, but for now, we wait impatiently and sympathetically to each other in our joint plight.

Side note, Jeni and I both are pretty spiritual people and believe we have strong guardian angels. For instance, we were going to leave one hour earlier than we did and that is exactly when the head on collision killing two happened. We are also trying to figure out what the purpose of all this is. Have things been going too well in our lives and we needed a little setback to wake us up to the fact that we still can be vulnerable? We both believe there are purposes that present themselves at some moment in our journey, not always directly apparent, but if you are aware and in the moment, maybe you’ll see it. So, of course I purchased Powerball, Mega-Millions, and US Nationwide tickets from New Mexico. I have some logic to this. I normally am feeling like we are doing well and happy and playing lotto is for fun. I rarely win anything, but the excitement of the maybe is always fun. So, I figure, why not buy them when my situation is not so good? Who knows, it may turn out to be the purpose behind it all. Stranger things can happen!

Day 833, really just day 4, in Las Cruces and we finally were able to make some decisions about how we proceed. The Ford dealer worked on the truck yesterday with a diesel tech telling them what to check. Bottomline, it looks like the sensor is bad as the drain has nothing but diesel fuel and the filters are still clean with no water or discoloration. Now the issue is getting a new sensor in. They don’t have one, but I also gave them permission to go to a third-party vendor to get one. It will be Monday before I know for sure when the truck will be ready to pick up, still fingers crossed it will be Monday and I can get some miles back down the road home. We are flying Jen out to Burbank to be with Kate and not have her lose any more time waiting on a truck. I’ll go home and wait on the Buick to be finished, which is looking to be within the next week. I’ll get some things done around the house and when the baby comes, I’ll load up and give the Buick a shakeout drive to California at a significantly lower fuel cost! Halfway to California and we had already spent near $400 on diesel and that was going to do nothing but get worse. Now, hotel costs are adding up to my return home expense expectation for later this week. At least I’m still going to break even. Mostly, just frustrated that I couldn’t see Kate before the birth and get the couple of things they needed done before the baby arrives. I will do when I get back out there in a few weeks.

So, day 900 or really day 5, Jeni is gone now, I’m sitting in the hotel by myself and wondering what to do. I did run across something on the news this morning that I’ve been thinking about all day and probably need to write about to get out of my head. So, my day may be a lot of word to paper time. Not a horrible notion though, I do love to write. But as it turned out I couldn’t organize my head enough to write anything. It was such a waste of a day, but I did nap, eat, nap, eat some more and then watched an entire season of a show on Netflix. Good thing I napped so much in the early part of the day because I stayed up until one in the morning. I haven’t done that in a while nor had I slept in until eight. Felt like I was eating brunch by the time I got down for breakfast.

So now it is Monday and everything was looking good for not getting home but was hopeful on getting down the road a bit. Then I got the phone call that they were having trouble with the fuel line snapping in to stay securely seated. I spent the next hour thinking I would rather the tech replace it than not feel secure about it staying in. I could only imagine hitting the first bump and fuel start spewing all over the road and worse on the exhaust. So, when they called back and said the tech was 50/50 on the repair, I did the right thing and said to please get a new one from El Paso and try to install it today. So that is where I am at now, feeling better about it getting installed correctly, bleeding and pressurizing the system in the morning with a good test drive. I will stay partially packed, get a shuttle ride when they call and say it is ready, pick it up, check out, load up and hit the road getting home one day earlier than planned and having never made it further than halfway to California. God, I pray tomorrow goes smoothly and I get home safe and sound. But I’m not going to get excited, I’ve done that the last two days. No, I think this time I will remain pessimistic at best and believe it when I’m in the truck and hours down the road! Maybe not until I see the lights on the house will I believe I’m out of this weird time in the Twilight Zone.

As promised, I received a phone call at 9:00AM on Tuesday that the truck was ready. Apparently, the tech stayed late and finished it up and when he came in Tuesday morning, he took the truck on an extended test drive, about quarter of a tank test drive. Some might think this was a waste of fuel, especially in how expensive diesel is, coming in around $5 a gallon, but for me it was cheap insurance that the truck was really fixed. I got a ride from the courtesy van, paid my house payment of a repair job, packed up, checked out, and hit the road home. Twelve hours later, after a day of uneventful driving, I got home and went to bed. Ah, my own bed. The best night of sleep in over a week. Since I’ve been back, I’m not sure the twilight zone is done with me though. I’m seeing things out of the corner of my eye, my aunt passed, and then I walked next door to get something from the guest house and heard the tv on in the living room. Mind you, I was in the house the day before, but I literally stepped inside and left something in the foyer. The remotes were under the tv on the shelf, but the tv was on and playing music on iheart. Well, at least the ghost had good taste in music. I checked the house none the less because this isn’t the first incident of weird in the guest house. The prior instance, was me turning the corner behind the house only to find the door standing wide open. It is possible the door was left open by Jen while she was working there, but I usually double check. What’s next? I would like some normal for a few days. Is that too much to ask?