Friday Night Update

Mo's repairs are not finished. So just after noon, we headed out to Yeager Airport to pick up a minivan. Our drop-off of the small car we've been driving for 9 days and pick-up of the Dodge Caravan minivan went smoothly. Then after lunch, we went to the Ford dealership and talked to Tim, the Ford repair manager. He called for them to make Mo accessible to us, and we pulled up right behind Mo in the very last repair bay.

Our transfer of basically EVERYTHING inside, with the exception of some odds and ends, to the van went fairly smoothly. It took us almost two hours in 96-degree heat. With 50% humidity and the back of Mo closed up with no fresh air coming in, packing was brutal.  The van is now completely full but somehow we will need to wedge into it the stuff that is in our hotel room. However by the time we got back to the hotel, neither of us could move a muscle, we almost passed out from working like that in such hot weather (Joey says the Marines cancel all maneuvers and exercise when it gets this hot!)  Thank goodness I planned for us to spend another night in the hotel, because we would never ever ever have been able to just hit the road--we stumbled back into the room and collapsed onto our beds trying to cool down.

They still hope to complete the repairs. We added the cost of a new radiator into the job (no extra charge for labor since they have it all taken apart anyway.) We figured for another $300 we should get that done now, because although they say it is still functioning, it is apparently quite rusted. And like I said, there's no extra charge for the labor. So far, the total for such a lengthy job is still fairly reasonable, TTTT. It's just that it has been so time-consuming .

 We have no idea when it will be done or when we will get down here to retrieve Mo, but once we get home I guess there's no big rush. Tim says they will keep Mo on their lot until we can get here. He said we were patient with them and they will be patient waiting for us to get back. This is reassuring since after next weekend, we are busy every weekend until October. Of course, when we do get down, we will not really be able to "camp" on the way back home again, because we've removed all the bedding, dishes, pots and pans, and everything else that would make the vehicle "livable-in". This is a precaution, on the offchance that once they finish what they are doing, they discover some horrendous problem with something else that makes it financially stupid to continue to put any more money into this vehicle. But right now, it seems repairable.
 
We got take-out Chinese food for dinner and ate in our room--we were too pooped to do much else (I went and picked up the food.) Then I soaked in the hotel's hot tub for a while, while Joey just relaxed. We finished up the evening watching Michigan State on TV winning their first game of the season. Our plan now is to get up tomorrow morning as early as possible and head home. I love our van--it has very comfortable seats, all kinds of fancy extras (including a very useful back-up camera, which since we can't see anything out the back window of the van, is a great thing to have!), and it should, I hope, be a comfortable ride.

This is the second time we've come home from a vacation without Mo. It is not a great feeling but there's really no choice. So we are doing our best to deal with it.