The Saga of Vehicle Repairs

We are still in Fresno. Lots of family time since arriving.  We have attended the grandson’s baseball games. Logan is quite the player and his team almost wins sometimes. Logan plays catcher. Tom says it is the most interesting and also the key player on the team. Think Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench, and Roy Campanella. Maybe some day .

Logan is in 5th grade and is 11. Ryan is just 5 and also plays baseball. Watching Ryan’s game is like watching a bunch of cute puppies. The coach thinks it’s like herding cats.

We were in Fresno to get the RV fixed after the tire blowouts.  The piece that Tom picked up off Hwy-15 was replaced, reinforced, somewhat reconstructed and repainted. Central Valley RV have done a superb job on this complicated repair.


The airbag was slightly damaged and the air leaked when the engine was not running, keeping it pumped up. There was some frame straightening that was done, the ‘whiskers’ behind the wheel was replaced and new lights were installed in the retrieved side panel.  We are completing the repairs that were started in December/January before we had to leave for Indio and Quartzsite. The refrigerator is the most complicated. It works on propane just fine; that is how we were able to use it in January through March. It will not work on electric. We have thawed the ice cream twice thinking it was finally fixed.  We switch back to propane and all is well. I think our repairman, Daniel, has ruled out all possible failures and will be back on the line with Dometic tomorrow morning and I think we can proceed with the final fix. We only now have one last fix… the toilet. It is electric and makes the most unusual loud clicking sound when flushed. The part for that has been ordered and should be fixed soon, but then we are all familiar with Thetford/Dometic.
The other repair saga we are dealing with is DA TOAD.  Our trusty Jeep has a dying problem. It died on Tom when he was south of Fresno. It started after sitting for about 30 minutes. Two days later after visiting old friends DA TOAD died 3 times within 10 minutes. After the third time it refused to start again. We had it towed to Sunnyside Auto Repair.  The bad news was it was a computer. $800 later we had a warrantied rebuilt computer. We drove it about 30 miles and it died. It was after business hours so we had it towed back to the tow company’s garage to be locked up for the night. The next day the Jeep did not die so we picked it up and drove it about 25 miles and it died again… after business hours. Towed again.

Currently the shop has our tow bar setup so if it should die while testing it their own truck can tow it. The shop owner thinks they have found the cause of the failures, but they want to test drive it for a couple of days to make sure.
So what else have we been doing?  Easter was a fun weekend. Saturday was the Eggstravaganza at church, an egg hunt and games. We had a kissing booth. Tom bought candy kisses and we brought Panda. She was a great kisser.

The next day after church we gathered at Perko’s for lunch. Mom, Jenny and Greg, Julie and fiancé, Claudio, Claudio’s sister, Francie, Tom’s sister, NanCy, and Tom and I.

After lunch we all headed to Exeter to see the murals again. This time we were prepared with maps, descriptions, and information about the ‘hidden’ images in each picture.

Claudio found the Mickey Mouse VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Sometimes it took all of us to figure it out.

Last Thursday was opening day at the AAA Giants’ farm team, The Grizzlies. Jennifer was helping with the fireworks and Jason is the Executive Chef for the Stadium. We were pretty proud to have both our kids working at the same venue, almost together.

On Friday night the Clovis Little League attended and walked the bases. Logan was sick and stayed home, but Ryan was excited to attend.

I, of course,took pictures of fireworks.

Grizzlies Fireworks VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We have been staying at Camp Central Valley RV, doing some caching, fixing and replacing caches, and even placing a cache, called “Home Away From Home #2”.  This has been our life for the last 3 weeks, but soon we will be On the Road Again, Caching Places that we’ve never Been AND attending the Escapee WARE Rally in Lodi.