The Best Laid Plans...

Speedy is going to Texas for the winter. Ellen & I are volunteering at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge for three months, February through April. It is on the Texas coast, north of Corpus Christi. The refuge is best know as the winter home of the very rare Whooping Cranes.

We are supposed to start on the 1st of February. As such, we planned to depart during this past weekend, to give us some time to get there and to provide a bit of a buffer in the event of problems. It looked like an ideal weekend to leave, with reasonable weather here in the northeast and a holiday Monday to give us two days to traverse the Boston-New York-Washington corridor with lighter traffic. But, as they say, "the best laid plans...".

We are bringing the motorcycles to Texas as our primary means of transportation. Aransas is 30+ miles from the nearest supermarket and 15 miles from the nearest convenience store, so the bikes will be used for getting around "locally". It is easier than disconnecting Speedy and packing things up just to go get groceries. We will be towing them behind Speedy in our 10-foot long enclosed cargo trailer—about 2500 extra pounds to drag along.

I was attaching the trailer to Speedy on Friday, as we were going to move the van and trailer around to the front of the house to finish packing them on Saturday. I'd had Speedy out and about doing errands and topping of its gas tank and all was well. As I went to move the van the last inch to center the ball under the trailer hitch, I stepped on the brake and the pedal went to the floor. This is never a good sign.

After a couple of more attempts, I got out and looked underneath. Sure enough, brake fluid was pouring down from right under the middle of the van. Either a hard line rusted through or a hose failed. We weren't going anywhere on Friday. This was a huge disappointment, but we were lucky that it happened will standing still in our driveway rather than going down the hill with over a ton of trailer behind or while trying to slow down on some Interstate.

I called the local Dodge dealer and asked if they could look at it that day, as we were planning to leave Sunday. They assured me they would and should be able to fix it by Saturday. I called AAA and it was towed to the dealer. When I checked it in, I reiterated our predicament and was given the same assurance.

Saturday morning arrived and we got a call from the dealer from the service manager. They weren't going to even be able to look at it until Monday. Needless to say, I was less than happy and made it known. Even after describing the two conversations I'd had with the service department on Friday, he was hardly helpful, saying that there were ours ahead of us. I explained in rather emphatic terms that the reason for bringing Speedy to them was based on their assurance it would be serviced before Sunday and that I'd have made other plans if they had been more forthcoming. After going back and forth for about 15 minutes, we'd made little progress and ended the call.

I was surprised when he called back a couple of hours later to say that they had looked at the problem and would order the parts for Monday... and it would be about $750 to repair! Not much I could say except do it. No holiday weekend departure for us.

Monday morning arrived and another call from the dealer. The parts haven't arrived yet, but they'll get to it as soon as they come in. Probably no Tuesday departure either. This is not good.

Not only have we missed out on the lighter weekend traffic, but our weather window seems to be closing. Five inches of snow is predicted for the New Jersey through northern Virginia area for Tuesday and three inches are predicted for here on Tuesday night and early Wednesday. Speedy towing a trailer does not perform well in snow. We've been caught in Maryland and Virginia in the snow before and it isn't pleasant. Each of those states state seem to own no more than one snowplow.

It looks like we won't be leaving much before Thursday, nearly halving the amount of time we will have to get to Aransas. It is likely to be a straight-through drive rather than a meander.

More news tomorrow.