Waiting, Waiting, Waiting....for our baby to come home.

Creekside Estates
Weirton, WV

When we left Bradford, our plan was to stay at the COE until I realized that they didn't even have 30 amp electric.  It was expected to be hot and humid.  We ended up driving back to West Virginia.  We don't have to be in Indiana until September 19th, so wanted to spend some time with the kids before heading west.

Doug, Misty and Shay stopped over after work and we enjoyed the visit.  It's amazing no one ever runs out of things to talk about.

We took the truck to a Cummins dealer last Wednesday as it has almost 170,000 miles on it.  We have recently noticed a power loss in the mountains and our mpg have decreased.  Nothing huge, but noticeable.  We felt very comfortable with the shop which has been in business since 1952.  Diagnosis was a stuck injector.  

We took the truck back on Thursday at 6 am to have the injectors replaced.  The truck was finished on Friday many dollars later.  

Saturday night we went to the Crooked Dock for dinner and were pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the family there.  Shay and Doug drove us, as they know we don't like to drive after dark anymore.

Sunday morning Shay always has an open house Sunday brunch.  She never knows how many will show up, but she always has plenty of food.

Nick and Nikki invited us over to their home for dinner.  When we left Shay's we noticed the truck wasn't cooling.  

Monday morning we took the truck back to the Cummins dealer and they checked it and found the AC compressor was out.  They weren't able to do the repair work on the AC so we spent the rest of that day trying to find someone who would.  

We finally found someone that would do the AC so Tuesday at 8 am we drove over to Ohio and left the truck.  They called to say it wasn't done as they put two compressors in and both were bad.  Wednesday in the late afternoon we were told we could pick it up.  

Our original plans were to take the truck to a transmission shop to find out why the shift lever was difficult to get into gear.  We stopped at the transmission shop and they were just closing.  We left the truck and were told they'd call today.  John called around  3:30 to tell us he wanted to show us something in the transmission.  They are closing Friday for the holiday weekend.  

I can't tell you how much money I was expecting this repair to be.  When we arrived at Marini Transmission, John took us back and showed us what the problem was.  You had to yank so hard on the gear shift to get it out of park, sometimes I wasn't strong enough to do it.  John showed us the rod that connects to the gear shift.  It was catching on a worn piece.  He took a bur grinder to it, and it shifts like brand new.  I'm sure I'm not describing this properly, but the end result is, we have the truck back.  They finished up about 6, changed the filter and tranny fluid and the bill was under $500.  

One thing I liked was they let us stay in the shop and watch everything they did.  John explained how different things worked while I was underneath the truck.  

We are paid up here until the 6th, and I think we'll stay another week.  We haven't had much time to visit family and friends.  

Last Thursday we watched a local high school football game as our grandson, Levani, was playing in the band.  We left after halftime.  Tuesday night Levani had a soccer game that we watched.

Cell phone service is terrible down in this valley.  WIFI is even worse.  It took over an hour to download one photo. I've had so many people call or email wondering why they haven't heard anything from us.  I'll catch up once we leave here.

Turtle Safely......