~Friday, July 31, 2020~
Day 47
Another day in “paradise”, just waiting on some good news that our truck is receiving its new transmission today and that we could get back on the road by tomorrow. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. It was a day of much frustration between not getting good news on the truck and my website setup, stuff not going quite as smooth as I would like. In the morning, Jeff took a drive over to Jim Burke Ford to see if the truck was even up on the rack only to find it in the parking lot along with the other sea of “fix me” vehicles. He walked over to service, and talked to Omar who has been assigned our case from the very beginning. Jeff was told that the transmission arrived but that the parts department had to be sure that it’s the right transmission, then have to find the transmission specialist to install it. Apparently they only have 1 transmission specialist. Jeff couldn’t believe what he was hearing. You mean you’re going to spend the time and the money to ship a part here, not knowing that it’s even the right part? Jeff calmly asked him to walk over to the parts department to make sure it was the right one. The problem is our situation is not normal, being that we don’t have the convenience of going back to a home and driving another vehicle until this one’s fixed. It would have been nice to hear a response such as, “I’m sorry this is not acceptable. Let me see what else I can do to expedite things”. Instead it’s just a bunch of service center 101 b*$%. Jeff just stared at Omar in disbelief that they weren’t making things happen, and walked out. When Jeff got back, he immediately called Ford and left a message with Josh, then composed a nasty email to Ford about how unacceptable this has all been, where we’ll be on day 17, stranded at an RV park in 100+ degree weather, missing 2 weeks of vacation we can never get back, and having to cancel any future reservations. Hopefully they infer too, that we are requesting reimbursement for all of our expenses to date. So incredibly frustrating.
So to blow off a little steam, we left Sadie in a nice air conditioned trailer, took the bikes and headed over to B.J.’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.
There is a very nice bike trail that begins at the city park behind our RV park and goes for miles. So off we went with the scene of lovely green parks, and lakes mixed in with a few oil wells. What a combination. After 7 miles in the intense heat, we arrived forgetting that there is no indoor air-conditioned seating right now due to COVID. Ugh! But we managed to get a nice shady table with a bit of a breeze running through. After a few good beers and some yummy horderves, we got back with an excited welcome by Sadie.
With hot days comes warm evenings, so we took a lovely stroll around the park, stopping to talk to Larry who was reading outside. As it turns out, they were not able to get a campsite, but were allowed into Yosemite to tour around. We were so happy to hear that, since they drove all that way. Apparently, Yosemite is turning away people that don’t have reservations due to the pandemic, so he was one of the lucky ones. Originally we were going to have him over for dinner tonight, but told him with the way our day had gone, we wouldn’t be good company anyway. So we postponed it for Monday or Tuesday. He was very understanding.
Once the reality set in that we were going to be here another weekend, Jeff concocted a plan to get us out of here. So we called Mom Trom in El Dorado Hills, to see if she’d like a little visit, with a proposal to go to Tahoe on Sunday to raft down the Truckee which she had last done 5 years ago, and then we’d leave Monday morning. She loved it, except she had plans on Sunday to take a friend out for a birthday brunch. So it looks like it will be Sadie, Jeff and I. Looking forward to seeing my mom for the weekend!