I wanted to get some new tires for the Jeep and the company that I wanted to use is in Texas and Colorado, and of course they say all across the USA. However they are not in Kansas. So I had to wait to get to Colorado for tires. That was another five weeks of driving on tires that I wanted to replace before they got dangerous. Fortunately I had enough tread that I think I was still safe. I got to Denver and shortly had new tires. I felt better. At least till a couple days later when I discovered that they had replaced my nice chrome valve stem caps with some cruddy plastic ones. When I was back in the area I asked about them and was told that when they put the new seals one the pressure sensors they replace the metal caps with plastic ones because the mag chloride that is used on the streets in the winter causes a galling that requires the valve stem to be cut off if the tire needs air. With pressure sensors at around $125.00 each nobody wants to lose a valve stem. But they did have some plastic valve caps that look chrome so I was happy again. I went to another place and had the oil in the Jeep changed. Okay it took two places to get that triplicate, but just keep reading.
We grabbed a quick breakfast in a fast food place and as we are leaving the parking lot the engine on the Jeep died. It took about four times normal cranking to start. The check engine light is displayed. We had errands that had to be run so we kept driving and hoping there was nothing that would stall us permanent. For about four day nothing happened except the check light stayed on. When I could I took it into the dealership. They are in the middle of a major remodeling program and one of the contractors had cut the telephone/computer lines. No computers meant that they could not even diagnose the problem. The days where a mechanic can look and listen to your car and figure out what is wrong is long gone. There are several computers on every car and truck. I was told that as soon as the phones were working the computers would be back up. Wrong! The next morning I called and the phones were working so I took the Jeep in. The modem had been short circuited and burned out and the techs were out getting a replacement. Maybe the computers would be working soon? After a half hour or so somebody brought in a laptop that had an air card and they could do some diagnosis. Three faults were reported, two which had reset themselves, and the third which did not indicate where the problem was with their limited computer capability. They reset the third fault (there is a triplicate) and got rid of the check light. We drove up into the mountains forty or fifty miles to over 12,000 foot with no problem. Two days later I am turning a corner at a major intersection and the engine died and would not restart. Erma got into the drivers seat and I went to the back to try to push it out of traffic. Almost before I had pushed a foot there were two young men and a young woman that came to help me push. That is another triplicate. Right around the corner they left and I was able to get the Jeep into a parking lot. I got into the drivers seat and it started instantly. We headed abut ten miles to the Jeep dealership without incident. With the full compliment of computers they found two sensors that were not playing nice with each other and one of them was indicating that it was getting hot. Getting hot indicates to me that it was about to fail totally. The mechanic did not say that but I would bet. I wonder why there were not three sensors that needed to be replaced. Oh my, do you suppose there is a sneak in there somewhere just waiting to fail later.
While in Topeka we developed a leak around the windshield and the drivers side window of the motor home which we decided to wait and have fixed in Denver where we had bought the motor home. We took it in to have that fixed along with a few other things like changing the oil in the generator, etc. Of course they fixed it the first trip in, right? Wrong! I am sure that they fixed part of it but the first time it rained the window leaked. Wait out the weekend and call to make an appointment again. They were quick to get us in and worked on it again. By that time I had a couple other things I wanted looked at also. I had tools to work on things before I retired but now I cannot justify carrying them along and besides some of this stuff is too high or too heavy for me to want to work with. This was the day we got breakfast and the Jeep died the first time too. We had to go the south side of Denver and got started back to the north side a lot later than we had expected to pick up the motor home before the shop closed. We were in rush hour traffic on an Interstate and believe it or not we made it to the repair shop with five minutes to spare. The leaks were sealed and fixed at last. That is until we had a very slow short rain. We had a tiny stream of water coming in. A normal rain would have had a big stream coming in. You should have heard the disgust in the voice of the service manager when I called him the next morning. He said bring it in at your convenience. About forty five minutes later we were packed up again and headed back to the shop. Just as an added bonus this was the morning that the Jeep stalled at the corner. I really hope that the leak is fixed because I do not want to take it in again and have the Jeep have another problem. The two must be connected some how. A side note here. We just had a very short shower and there is not water yet. The shower was short and perhaps not an indicator of future performance. Sounds like an advertisement for a stock.
My eyeglasses are a Silhouette brand and very few place have parts for them and I also do not trust just anyplace to adjust them. I have had a temple cushion piece missing for a couple years and the glasses have been crooked for about that long. While in Denver I wanted to get both those problems fixed. The store where I bought them has several locations in Denver. I went to one and they put on a temple piece and straightened them for me. Beautiful job, really. They could not match the color of the original temple pieces, but okay, I have a black one and a gray one. On the about twenty mile drive home the frames reverted back nearly the same crooked position they had been before. Not quite but close. On the day we went to the south side of Denver with the check light on and the motor home in the shop I was going to be close to another of the store locations. This time the straightening for a week so I think it will stay correct. However the end of the other temple piece, the black one, disappeared and left something that was scratching my temple. We were close to a third location so I went there and they had a gray temple piece and fixed the glasses. So this is three different problems with the glassed and three different store location. A double triplicate.
Right after I got the tires and the oil change on the Jeep the refrigerator in the motor home quit working. We called a service tech and he was going to come out. Before he got to our motor home we started smelling ammonia. My thought was that the cooling coils has sprung a leak. I called the tech and told him about the smell and he said, “It is your cooling unit.” He ordered one out of Texas. I bet we came within fifty miles of it as we came north. It took three days to get it shipped here. We gave all the food in the fridge to our neighbors. The service fellow took about three hours to put the new cooling unit in. So we had a triplicate in shipping days and one in hours of installation. A third triplicate can be made from the fact that it cost us three times as much to fix this small (large for a motor home) refrigerator as it would have cost for three fairly large house style refrigerators. The fridges that use heat to produce cold as a lot more expensive than the ones that use a compressor.
We have had a fellow do some special work for Erma on a little thing for her and we have gone back three times to get that done. We were there today and I decided that I wanted a similar bit of work done for me so there will be three trips for me to see him before it is done. A pair of triple trips to see him to get the work done. If we had had our acts together and our decisions done we could have done all this in two trips flat. Oh well I guess that someone need to buy gas to support the oil companies.
Every time we have come to Denver we have done some work with a fellow that is way south. So that day that the motor home was in the shop, the Jeep died, my second eyeglass repair we went to see him.
It was great the he was near the eyeglass place. But as luck would have it we needed to go back the next day and we will have to got back a third time. Another triplicate.
Is this enough triplicates? How about one more just for good measure. I went out the Colorado School of Mines geological museum to see the new building where the minerals are displayed. The curator is a friend on mine that I worked with at Newmont when I was there. It is a tremendous facility and far better that any mineral museum I have seen except the Smithsonian Institute. That is likely the best in the world. When I got out there I pulled the keys out of the ignition and picked up my camera bag. When I did that I thought, “I have a telephoto lens on the camera and I will want a wide angle so I should change it before I go in.” After I took pictures inside and left to head home I reached into my pocket for my keys and did not have them in either pocket. I looked in the Jeep and there they were laying by the gear shift. If I had put the keys back in the ignition the Jeep would not have locked, but I laid them down because I could not hold them and change the lens. I went back in and borrowed a cell phone from my friend and tried this bit having Erma send a signal from her fob by phone to unlock a car. It does not work even if you try three (or more) times. I had forgotten to take my phone of course so any call I made had to be done on other phones and Erma could not call me. Amazingly she got quick help from her sister to come to my rescue. I just knew that her sister would be out on their farm way up north of Denver and not be in reach for hours. In about an hour Erma was there with her keys, my phone and the rescue squad. There were three people in the car with her that came to rescue me from my predicament. I guess that is enough triplicates for any writing.
We have extended our stay here two weeks longer than we had intended. I just hope that the extended stay does not become a triplicate. Before I got this posted we decide to stay here for one more day so there is a triplicate of extended stays. Sure am glad that I am retired.
There are many places to visit in this great country of ours. Here is another one that should be seen.
No. 2 – Garden Of Eden
One hundred and thirteen tons or 2,273 bags of cement plus many tons of limestone gravel may not be a sight that the average person would think would be worth seeing unless it has been shaped by Samuel Perry Dinsmoor. Dinsmoor was a Civil War Veteran who had a career as a farmer and teacher. When he retired in 1905 at age sixty four he started sculpting and expressing his ideas about religion and his political views as a Populist. Dinsmoor had a bent towards doing the eccentric thing before it was popular. He had married his first wife on horseback decades before. He built his own house out of limestone that was sculpted to look like logs, along with a lot of his furniture. In 1907 he opened the lower floor and his gardens to be viewed by visitors. Then he started adding various sculptures around his house. One of the early sets of sculptures that he created was to tell the story of the creation of Adam and Eve and their subsequent banishment from the Garden of Eden. Another of his sculptures shows how Cain killed Abel. Some of his sculptures are seemingly just for fun, but may well have a deeper political meaning. One of those shows a soldier who is aiming his gun at an Indian that is ready to shoot an arrow at a fox that is chasing a cat that is pursuing a bird that is stalking a worm that is eating a leaf. At eighty one his first wife died. The county forced him to bury her at a local cemetery. He exhumed her body at night, brought her home and buried her in several tons of concrete, where she remains today. Following her death he married their 20 year old housekeeper and had two more children. He continued building his sculptures of concrete until his death at 89.
Till Later This Is Uncle Duck
