Still have no pictures to post but have to tell about the trip from Brownsville to Denver. I was working in Houston so I volunteered to drive Gramie Jameson's car to Denver for her. She is moving and needed her car in Denver.
I got off work on Thursday and flew to Harlingen. Gramie met me there with her car and her neighbors to take her back to Brownsville. It was about 8:30 when I got there because my plane was a couple of hours late. I had made arrangements to stay all night in Kingsville which was a couple of hours up the road. I made it there okay but it was late.
Next morning as I started to hit the road, I found I had a flat tire. I went to a service station and put in some air. Not wanting to be in the middle of Texas with a flat tire, I took it to Goodyear to get it fixed. They found a spike in it and the spike had damaged the tire beyond repair. I had to buy a new tire.
While the car was on the lift, they found a lot of play in both front wheels and told me the wheel bearings needed to be replaced. They also told me the rear brakes were about 98% gone and should be replaced. I called Gramie and she gave me the OK to get the repairs done.
The quickly fixed the rear brakes but could not get the ball joints out to access the bearings in the front wheels. They worked on it for a couple of hours and finally said they couldn't do it. They thought whoever had put ball joints in had put in the wrong ones and they were afraid to mess with it. So they decided to put it all back together and send me on my way and hope nothing happened until I could get it to Denver and get it fixed. While putting the front wheels back together, they found the problem to be nothing more than the bearings were not properly adjusted. They adjusted them and I was on my way. I had lost 4 hours. I had hotel arrangements made for Amarillo. I changed them to Lubbock which was closer.
I stopped in San Antonio to get gas. Gramie's car has this thing that it will lock the doors after they have been shut for so many seconds. I am at the back of the car putting in gas when I hear the car lock and yes, the keys were in the ignition. I had to wait almost an hour for a lock smith to come and unlock it. He unlocked it faster with his "slim jim" than I could with a key.
The rest of the trip went pretty well with the exception of 45 to 50 mile an hour winds blowing against the car between Amarillo and Raton. If the winds would have been from the back of the car, I would have had to put my foot on the brake to keep from speeding.
All is well that ends well?
