Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Not Exactly How We Planned It.

We had been planning our long Easter Weekend camping trip for a good few weeks now. Knowing the hubbs was leaving for a while right after, we knew this would be a great little get away for us. Back up about 3 weeks. We took the Westy out for a drive and on our way home it started making this awfully loud beeping noise. We both looked at each other with this "what in the world, is going on" look. We pulled over in a parking lot and let it cool down for a minutes and the beeping stopped. But we knew something wasn't right. We continued home, not far down the road it stated up again. "This is not happening" I though to myself. Knowing the Westy is well over 20 years old and it was going to come with its problems at some point or another but the timing could not have been worse. The hubbs added some water to the anti-freeze compartment. Crossing our fingers we headed home. Stopping to grab lunch on the way. Just out side our sub-division the beeping started again. Just let us make it into the garage we said. Sure enough it was leaking pretty bad from under the engine compartment. Blah!!!! Total bummer. After a little research we where able to determine the problem. We ordered the part to fix it with and crossed our fingers that all would be done in time for our get away. Skip ahead a week, the evening we received parts in the mail the hubbs got right to it. Maybe 30-45 minutes into it and he called it quits. Turns out simply just getting the old parts off was harder than he though it was going to be. As he said it "I'm not going to loose sleep over this." You could tell he was getting frustrated with it. We called U-haul to see what time they closed, rushed down and picked up a flat bed trailer to load her up on and take her into the shop the next morning. Thankfully prior to ordering the parts the hubbs had found a local shop here that could do the repairs but he was pretty sure we could save money doing it himself. Sadly it didn't work out that way. 
We loaded her up with the help of our neighbors. Let me say that was a scary scary ordeal. I started out in the driver seat and then the hubbs quickly kicked me out. E hopped in and took control as the hubbs pushed her out of the garage. Then it as up to the two of us and C to push her up on the flat bed. They must have determined that another man would do better at pushing so E and I switched. I was in charge of the break, making sure she didn't slide back or go over the front right into the bed of our truck. Talk about a huge responsibility. No pressure, none at all lol. 
The hubbs dropped off the Westy the next morning but we didn't get a call back on a it for two days since they were busy. We still had high hopes that she'd be done and ready for our trip over the weekend, We scheduled our check in for Friday evening just to give a little extra time. Friday afternoon rolled around and we'd just returned from our bike ride. We received the call, it wasn't happening. They had found another leak and needed to order parts to fix it. I was heart broken. We did a little shopping that morning for our trip, but stuff that we needed, for the van its self. Thankfully we held off on food shopping till we knew fore-sure. 

We made the most of our weekend now that we didn't have any plans. The hubbs sprung a trip to Bowling Green, KY on me that afternoon. It's about a hour an a half to two hours away. Why not. We made a afternoon of it, came back to town and had dinner out. Saturday we spent the day down in Nashville and then Sunday we went out to LBL - Land Between the Lakes and did a bit of exploring. I was totally bummed our trip was cancelled but we still had a great time on our long weekend together.

Wednesday afternoon we finally received a call that the Westy was finished and ready to be picked up. The hubbs wasn't able to pick it up till the next day but coming home that evening and opening the garage door and finally seeing it back was such a exciting time. It was the first of sadly I'm sure not the last time she'll be in the shop. Thankfully going into this when we first bought Westy we set up a Westy Fund, incase something like this were to come up. I'm forever grateful we did to, because that would have def. hurt our account had we not. 
Plans are set for a weekend camping trip when the hubbs returns. It'll be the perfect way to celebrate both of our birthdays. :) 

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