Old friends and new

 Rich Marsten.  We bought the motorhome from him at Beaver Coach Sales in Bend, Oregon in 2005.  We’ve kept in touch with him since.  We’re friends. Last Tuesday, while we were out of our coach for repairs in Salem, we made the short 50 mile drive down to Eugene to have a visit with him.  Rich has moved on and opened his own coach sales shop.  It’s smaller than the one in Bend.  He seems happier. Today we spent the day with Makaila, Judy’s niece we’ve never met before.  (And Morgan.) It was a good day.  

We’ve figured out the problem

 It’s Salem.  There must be an energy vortex in Salem.  You can drive in, but you can’t drive out!  We’ll be here for the weekend.  Heck, maybe we’ve moved here and just don’t realize it yet. The RV park we’ve been staying in has been great.  They keep finding a place for us each night when we have to come back.  They didn’t have any of the usual spots for us tonight, so they put is in the back with the seasonals; the people who are just living here.  Wait a minute.  Maybe they’re not being nice.  Maybe this whole engine/RV park thing is a conspiracy.  The repair shop says “Nope, have to stay another day.”; then we call the RV park and they say “Okay we’ll try to fit you in”.  They’re working together to keep us here! This all feels so familiar.  OMG.  It’s Groundhog Day!  Wait.  Wait.  That television show, The Dome.  Help.  We’re in the Salem Dome!  

Happy Birthday Alex

 It’s his birthday today.  12 years old. We went to gymnastics practice while we were in Colorado in May.  Practice is kind of a wild thing, with everyone working at once.  There were kids everywhere. Alex in the air. A kid in the air in front of Alex in the air. Motivation on the wall. An older kid working on his iron cross. Alex on the high bar working on the blind switch from forward giants to backward giants. Alex trying out his back flip with 1 ½ twists.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKC2uoH0cE&feature=youtu.be Happy Birthday Alex.  You’ve accomplished a lot. 

Update

 The injector pump has been replaced.  The problem has been fixed.  We spent two nights in a hotel.  It’s good to be back in the bus. We went on a test drive.  It’s not completely fixed.  It still runs a little rough.  The problem has been isolated to injector number 2.  We were at the end of the day.  Since the bus is no longer disabled, we were able to drive it back to the motorhome park and spend the night in it.  The injector we need is in Spokane.  It can be here tomorrow.  We deliver the bus back to the shop in the morning for the rest of the fix. Marv is the guy working on the bus.  He seems good.  Really really good, in fact.  While we were on the test drive he listened to the motor, the transmission, the road noise, the wear on the tires, and the rattle/clunk that no-one else has been able to find.  We talked our way through everything.  When we got back to the shop, he found a loose panel in the left outside cabinet that rattles.  When the slide is in, that would put the rattle just left of center right behind the driver.  That sure seems like our problem.  We haven’t figured out how to eliminate the rattle yet, but that’s no big deal.  The big deal was finding the it. So here we are tonight, happy and comfortable in our own RV in the nice RV Park we were staying at before.  Tomorrow we deliver the coach back to the repair shop.  With any luck we’ll be done with repairs by tomorrow afternoon and be back on our way.