www.cancermonster.net

6:25p mountain time

At least I know what time it is.   And that’s about all that is going for this day.

We left  . . . where were we this morning?  Anyway we left late because we couldn’t tell our bodies that there was some mix-up with the time.  We slept long.  It was a good sleep though.

We traveled about 180 some odd miles when we heard a loud BANG and the motorhome started chugging like an antique rail car.  Coughing and spluttering. We pulled off the road in No-Wheres-Ville, New Mexico.  The motorhome never actually died. It just begged to be put out of its misery.  We stood there on the side of the road, Dan and I, dodging tiny cactus creatures that threatened to hitch-hike on our legs, and panicked for three minutes (Give or take a few).

“Maybe it’s just bad gas.”
“It’s not bad gas, Treese.”
“Maybe it’s just a hole in the exhaust pipe that is making all that racket.”
“No. I think we blew an exhaust gasket, Treese.”

I started to sing prayers.  Dan started to sing curses.  I sang louder than him so that God would hear just mine and not his.  I think it worked.

We had two options. One, we could call Roadside and get towed to the nearest service center.  “Billy Bob Garcia” would be kind to us, right?  Two, we could get in and try to drive it to the next exit ourselves.  Then we could choose between “Billy Bob” and “Tex Alamoto” for the repairs.  We chose to take the chance of driving it in.  We climbed aboard and settled the children back into their seatbelts.  I continued to pray.  Dan continued to curse.  But we did both more calmly.  See the prayers won out!

We drove on.

Slowly at first.  Strangely, the gages never changed.  The oil pressure didn’t drop and the temperature gage didn’t climb. We figured we were about twenty miles out of Los Cruses, NM.  Could we make it?  The first exit looked like a road to nowhere.  The next a convenience store and nothing else.

We drove on.

The engine was loud and popping.  The gas gage was sucking air.  But we kept going.  Backfire here.  Pop-rattle-rattle there.  “Dear Lord, help us get to Las Cruces.

We drove on.

Funny now, all the people that have been calling us all along, were not answering their phone.  We really needed advice from Greg.  He wasn’t answering.  Anita wasn’t answering.  Denny didn’t answer.  At first.  The second call he came on the line asking me what time it was!  Lol

“We have problems bigger than time.  We are in a bit of trouble here Den.”

I told him what was going on and where we were.  He got on his computer and found our location.  He found the RV repair shops in Las Cruses.  He navigated us in.

“Your next exit will be Ave. de Masilla.  Take a right and then the first left. And there’s a shop there.  No looks like the whole road is all about RVs.”

He was looking at Google Satellite Maps.  He could see aerial photos of the road we were taking.   That’s my Denny.  Go Denny.

We saw RV Sales and Repair on the left and an RV park on the right.  Through the middle we saw a Walmart Super center on the other side of Hwy 10.  Denny did us proud.  Of course on Sunday at quarter to noon, the shops were closed.  We pulled into the RV park.  Turned off the engine and Dan and I walked hand in hand inside.  It was a nice place.  Our Good Sam RV Club card would get us 10% off our inevitable stay.  Before we committed to the park, we wanted to make sure that the shops were going to stay closed all day.  What if they opened at noon or something, you know?   So we pulled away and checked the shop signs as we went down the street.  All  still closed. All day.  Oh well.  There was the Walmart. We needed something to cook for dinner and some milk.  I needed some medicine and to exchange that comfortable bra I got in California that I hadn’t tried on . . .

When we checked out of Walmart, our PayPal card was declined.  What?  Run it again. Declined.  We had some cash.  Then we had less cash.

What’s up with that.

We re-boarded our boat and chugged back out and back around to the park.   I once had a stick shift Camero.  It was hot. It started acting up and I couldn’t afford the fix.  “I could cut out the catalytic converter.  I would run better, but it would be really loud.”  I hadn’t thought of that car in a while.  It came back to me this afternoon for some reason.

When we tried to pay for our lot with the PayPal card, it was declined again. Now we had even less cash. What is going on?  The majority of what we have left for gas, not to mention trying to get this motorhome repaired, is in that account.  And it’s only in there because people have been kind enough to put it there.  We couldn’t have made it this far without your help.  We thank God for that account.  That account has been our saving grace.  And now it’s declined.

What is next.  This trip has been hard enough.  Now this and that.  And I think God must think highly of us.  They say that God never gives you more than you can handle.  He must think I can handle all this.  Isn’t Butt Cheek Sarcoma moving to your lungs enough?
We have to get to that money.  Why would it be locked.  Well, we are moving across country.  State to state. Using the account for things we never used it for.  Once our bank called me when I flew from Oregon to Florida to see if I really rented a car.  And to see if I really wanted the rental car company to charge my card with $10,000.   That was nice of them.   Why didn’t PayPal call us if there was a question?  Hmm.  Could it be that we moved from Portland to Lincoln City and didn’t change our address on the account.  And could it be that we changed from our Blackberries to prepaid cell phones and didn’t change the phone number on our account?

After we were settled into our lot in the campground and all the hookups were hooked up, Dan and I got on the Wi-Fi and on paypal.com and dug through the account looking for answers.  We were not really getting along at that particular moment, so I left him to it and took a nap.  And then I took the kids to the hot tub.

When we got back to the RV, Dan wasn’t there.  But there was a Roadrunner!

   HAHAHHAHA

It was much smaller than the one the coyote chases on that old cartoon, but there was no denying it was a roadrunner.   The kids were determine to catch it.  It was pretty fast.  They had to be sneaky.  I am not sure who’s idea it was but they thought that if they pretended they were each a cactus, they could sneak up on the roadrunner.  I laughed so hard I almost fell down.

Those kids held their hands up in the classic cactus pose and when they thought the bird was looking the other way, they would run ten feet and stop.  Run ten feet and stop.  It was hilarious.  Of course, if that coyote could never catch a Roadrunner, neither could my three little cacti.  But they made me laugh and that was just what I needed.

I called Dan.  He had walked down the street to check when the repair shops would be opened in the morning.  And he tried to buy something again with the PayPal card.  Declined.

I went back to the website.  We had, indeed, not updated our information.  I changed our contact info and found a link to call customer service.  (That is new!) And I signed Dan’s phone up for mobile banking.  When Dan got back from his walk we called PayPal together.  It was just what I thought.  Weird charges in weird places and the phone numbers disconnected.  We had to answer questions about where we made purchases and where we tried to make charges today.  And we let them know that we are driving on.  As soon as we get the beast fixed.

Now, everyone, go check that your PayPal account is up to date.

So we had a whole evening here at this really great park. Dan and the girls did the laundry and I cleaned up the motorhome and cooked up dinner.  What tomorrow will bring is unknown.

It is possible that the problem with the motorhome is more minor than we think.  If someone could get on it right away and get it done, we could get on our way and maybe make Tampa, where the new Cancer Center is, by Thursday night.  If the problem is a blown exhaust gasket like Dan and Greg think, it will take some time and cash to fix.  Even if it’s less than $500, we won’t have enough after for gas.  If it’s worse than that . . . We may have to come up with another way out from here.   We thought of many things.  But it will all depend on what the mechanics say tomorrow.

And I have to be in Tampa by Friday morning.  One way or another.

This trip has been  . . . Well it’s been a trip.   When I was eleven, My family moved from Ohio to Florida.  We broke down every 100 miles.  We are still talking about it.  Laughing about what we weren’t laughing about back in 1978.

I will be talking about this trip for the rest of my life.   And that will be a long, long time.  I guess we need a lot to talk about for all those years.

Amazing.

I wish we could just drive on.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode of “Wing and a Prayer” when 10,000 Angels show up to carry the old motorhome and the five lonely castaways all the way across the state of Texas and then straight across the Gulf of Mexico . . .

PS: Just in case your wondering Dennis, at this moment, it’s 9:10pm Mountain Standard Time.  “Does anybody really care?”