July 8, 2007, Yosemite Lakes, CA -- It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. Which means either I haven’t been attending to my business or things have been happening to keep me from writing. Both are true. But what is also true is that I have had some difficult trials and some amazing “coincidences” in which complete strangers have been extremely kind and helpful to me. The real California Angels are not in LA. They’re in Corning and Cloverdale, among other places.
But first a quick catchup. I spent the weekend of June 30-July 1 with my late husband’s family in Central Washington. It was good to see all my in-laws and nieces and nephews. My husband’s family is blessed with very cute, very smart children who are delightful to be around. They all loved Charlie and he was very well attended to by children. This July 4th would have been John’s 59th birthday. He died three months after his 55th.
Then on July 2 I drove south to Sun River in Central Oregon. About half-way I noticed the low coolant light was on. I was nowhere near a town where I could get coolant, let alone a mechanic. Coolant was drizzling out of the engine at a pretty good clip. I managed to get to Madras and bought additional coolant but the diesel mechanic there was too busy to help me. I met my friend Steve and his friend Ray between Redmond and Bend and they checked the rig and thought it looked okay. It had stopped leaking by then. I drove to the Thousand Trails rv preserve near Sun River and parked the rig. Steve and I went out on Ray’s boat on East lake. They were fly fishing and caught some nice trout. I just enjoyed the beauty and company. The next morning I took Charlie to a boarding kennel. This is the first time Charlie has ever had to stay with strangers in a strange place. I don’t think he liked it but he survived. It’s probably a good thing for him to experience. I may have to do it again once or twice in my travels if I have to come back to Oregon for brief stops.
Steve and I then went to visit his friends Doug and Vickie in Sun River. We stayed at their beautiful home on the golf course. They are really great people. We rode bikes and went to an outdoor concert and just enjoyed the beauty of Central Oregon. One morning I was out enjoying the quiet and a fawn walked through the yard, followed by her mother.
On July 5 I picked Charlie up and headed south to meet my sister in California. I managed to make it to the Mt. Shasta area before the low coolant light came on again! No place to stop or pull over or get help until Weed. I bought a couple gallons of coolant and filled the reservoir. The rig continued to drip from time to time but not consistently. And the farther south I went, the hotter the weather got. I finally stopped in Corning and pulled into an rv park. It was excruciatingly hot -- I found out the next day it was 114 degrees. Even the locals were complaining about how hot it was. I plugged in, turned on the air conditioners and then went and jumped in the pool. After taking Charlie for a walk, I hosed him down.
Because I was only staying for the night I left the car hooked to the rv. I filled the entire space! The next morning I left around noon and drove into the Safeway parking lot a couple blocks away. There was also an auto parts store there and I was planning to get more coolant. Normally I would have walked the short distance from the rv park to the shopping center but it was already over 100 out. As I was trying to park, someone flagged me down. This was a big guy with long hair and tatoos. I thought, what the heck does this guy want!! He wanted to warn me. Somehow the pin that locked the tow bar to the car had been removed (I don’t know if someone had intentionally removed it or if it had just worked loose, but that doesn’t seem likely since it locks down), allowing the bar to come loose. The car was only attached on one side of the towbar. He tried to help me put it back together but we couldn’t do it. So we asked someone driving a fire rig to help. Bill and Bob worked quite awhile to get it back together and couldn’t. So I finally took everything apart and we discovered the tow bar had been bent when the car had come loose. Corning isn’t that big a town but they thought the muffler shop a couple blocks on the other side of the rv park might be able to straighten it. Bill, the guy who had first let me know of the loose tow bar was helping his grandmother shop for groceries and offered to give me a ride to the muffler shop when they were finished. I told him I could just take it myself. I offered him $5 for his time and help but he waved it off, telling me I should just say thank you to the Man Upstairs. I assured him I already had.
Rather than taking the bra off the car, I decided to just walk. Mistake. It was suffocatingly hot. But maybe that made me more sympathetic. Tim, who owned the muffler shop, couldn’t straighten the bar with the equipment he had but he had to go to the Napa auto parts store in town and offered to take me with him as he thought they would have the equipment necessary.
Apparently two of their machinists had just quit so no one was there to straighten the bar that day. Since I still had a long way to go to get to Potter Valley and it was after 2, I suggested I could leave the car there and pick it up on my way back to Oregon. Tim offered to let me park it in the parking lot at this muffler shop said he could find someone to straighten the bar so I left him my Saturn and my great thanks. I will swing back through next week. Sometimes you just know you can trust people.
So, without my dinghy I headed south and then west. At once point Charlie and I came across a huge field of sunflowers. Acres upon acres of them. What I found really interesting is that they were all facing the same direction. I presume they were facing the sun but I’m not sure which exact direction I was driving at that moment and so am unsure what direction they were actually facing. I wonder if sunflowers move their faces to follow the sun. We stopped for a brief time for Charlie to go wading in Clear Lake (which isn’t very clear at all!) because it was still incredibly hot. No problems with low coolant, though. Thank heavens!
I finally made it to Potter Valley around 6 pm. I parked the Mo in a large parking lot for the medical clinic my brother-in-law works at and left it there to go with them to their house while my sister packed and I grabbed a quick shower. We had dinner and then Colleen and Charlie and I headed south. Since we didn’t have my dinghy Colleen drove her car. We got to the rv park we were staying at north of Cloverdale around 10:30 so I got to back into a spot and hook up in the dark. Next morning we left fairly early but needed to fuel up. When I stopped at the gas station in Cloverdale I noticed my low coolant light was on again and the reservoir was almost empty. I had just put 2 gallons of coolant and at least one gallon of water in the day before. Coolant was running out of the engine like it was a sieve.
I asked if they had coolant at the station but they didn’t. Some guy hanging out there offered to come and look at the engine to see what he could see. I think he was a little out of it -- either drunk or high -- but what the heck. Well, he managed to see a pinprick hole spraying coolant. So I drove down the block to an auto parts store. One of the guys who works there came out to look and see how we might be able to patch it. A young many walked up and was observing what we were doing. I made some little crack about how big engines seem to capture men’s attention. He told me he was a diesel mechanic!!!! I couldn’t believe my ears. He and the shop guy talked about possible fixes. He thought it would be pretty easy to put in a patch. I told him if he had the time I had the money. He wasn’t sure he had his tools but if he did he said he’d be happy to help. I bought the patch kit and more coolant. When I came back out, he had his coveralls on and his tools laid out.
I asked him if he’d ever been told he was an answer to a prayer. He laughed and said he’d been accused of thinking he was God. I assured him he was a gift from God and that he could tell that to any young lady he might be trying to impress. He asked if we could get that on a video.
Just about that time a guy in a van advertising “mobile mechanic” drove up. Apparently someone at the auto parts store had called him. He was upset that someone else was helping me -- guess he thought he had a nice little paying job. So he asked the young man if he had a license to work on my rig. My newest angel, Matt, told him he was just helping a friend and didn’t need a license to do that. (Under his breath, Matt commented that he might not have a license but at least he had all his teeth!) The guy was pretty belligerent but I told him I was getting all the help I needed from a Good Samaritan and didn’t need him. Nor did I want his help; he didn’t impress me. He finally left, after whining and grumbling about Matt taking away his job.
In poking around, Matt discovered the radiator hose was in really poor shape and was literally falling apart. So we had to drain everything and pull the hose. We managed to find a hose at the auto parts store that would work. (I am getting WAAAYY to familiar with auto parts stores!) This young man spent more than two hours helping me fix my rig. It was amazing that a diesel mechanic just happened to show up at the exact moment I needed one. In talking with him I learned that he had brought his cousins to the recycling center adjacent to the parking lot where I was parked. They had been there the day before but the recycling center was closed. So while his cousins were turning in their cans and bottles, he decided to help me fix my Mo. He had just turned 29 the day before.
After he completely replaced my radiator hose and cleaned up all the spilled coolant, I offered to pay him and asked him how much would be fair. I don’t think for a minute he offered to help with the idea of getting paid, but rather just to help. I have no idea how much a diesel mechanic makes an hour. His cousins had made $38 on their recycling so he said “You got $38.50?” I was planning on giving him more and handed him two $20s and then offered him more. He refused. But I did give him a $25 gift card to Chili’s. This kid had spent more than 2 hours of his Saturday fixing my motor home and all he wanted was to match what his cousins had made from their recycling.
Just as we were finishing up Mr. Mobile Mechanic came by again. He kept trying to pick a fight with Matt, telling him, “Yeah, go ahead, hit me, you’ll go to jail,” and “I’m gonna call your boss and tell him you took a job away from me,” and similar garbage. I kept coming between them and pushing Matt toward his truck and telling him to leave, that this guy was a bully who wasn’t worth wasting time on. Finally I faced off with Mr. Mechanic and told him I had not called for his help or asked the auto parts store to, that he had no right to anything and that he should leave. He wasn’t wanted and he wasn’t needed and he had no business harassing people. He was very unhappy. Finally I convinced Matt and his cousins to get in their truck and leave and Mr. Mechanic finally gave up and left also. Later I called the auto parts store and told him about this guy’s behavior, that he was threatening to me and the young man who had offered to help me. So I found an angel and, unfortunately, also a selfish, spiteful, greedy old man.
So Colleen and I drove to Yosemite and while it wasn’t completely dark when we arrived, it was getting there quickly. But, no more incidences with coolant leakage or towbars breaking or other such things. Oh, except the little switch that turns the air conditioner and heater on broke off so I had to take the cover off the thermostat and now have to use my “leatherman” to turn the air on and off. Holy cow!!! Just when one thing gets fixed, another breaks. But at least this isn’t something that could cost me an engine! Just inconvenient.
More on Yosemite in the next post. This one is already way too long.
TravleinLady
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