On The Road Again!

I have had a lot of trouble with counting chickens before they are hatched lately. I will spare you the details, but many times in the last month we thought that we were leaving Houston and beginning our road trip "in a couple of days" or even "tomorrow is the day!". Do you know the words to "Hotel California"?

’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

That concept has been often mentioned for the last month.
Well, at this instant we think that today is the day and we are waiting for the last load of laundry to dry.

Most of the disappointments involved our 2000 Dodge Caravan that I inherited from my mom. She kept it in a garage and rarely drove it, so it is in better than average condition. It just turned 70,000 real miles, not 170,000 or 270,000 and a lot of those we put on it since arriving in Houston in April 2010.
The most recent car problem was


1) annual safety inspection that when we drove away from the dealer, we had a "check engine" light. The free reading of the car's computer was not very useful. But, the light went away.         And then came back.       And then went away.    And so on.

2) routine oil change and ask about "check engine" light. $695 later the light is out, but there is a large puddle of oil under the car in the parking lot.

3) Back to the dealer. They need to keep the car for several days, but we were to leave the next AM and only had enough food in the motel room for that. Prognosis was a week to fix. We had to rent a car (and were shafted on the fees) to get our groceries. We drove our little roller skate to the motel to get the things we needed for shopping. As we got into the roller skate to go shopping, we were talking about the lyrics:

You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

Then, exactly like in a movie, when the car started, the radio began playing the first notes of Hotel California! We laughed a lot and perhaps a few tears, not of joy. We need some 'grins'.

4) $1,028 later and a new oil pan, the drip seems gone, and we have hope (again).

So, I am writing this at the motel and we have not actually left, BUT I will remove it from the blog if disaster strikes again.

Wish us luck. The song that we prefer is "On The Road Again" by Willie Nelson. A friend also sent us a link to it online. We hope to be hearing it soon.

Dave & Hairy