Saturday, May 11, 2013

It’s All In My Head

 

We have been working pretty hard the last 10 day’s or so. We were farmed out to another campground for a couple of days to help get it ready to open.

When I sold my house, I stated that I would never hold another weed eater again. Never say never! For some reason this company does not have any lawn mowing or brush cutting equipment other than weed eaters. I spent two days with the maintenance crew at the North Shore campground at Lake Arrowhead, weed eating the entire campground. Around trees and obstacles is one thing but cutting the grass in large open areas was almost comical, almost because I was the one doing it. 

It did not help that I was fighting a major head cold, which made my mood a little more temperamental. Cutting an acre or two with a weed eater just seemed so inefficient. I finally just gave in to the fact that they were paying me and kept at it and went back to grumbling about my head cold.

After two days of swinging a weed eater and digging out some drainage ditches, I was pretty sore. Thankfully we were able to stay at our campground over the weekend and do our host duties.

The weather here took a nose dive and our high temps have been in the upper 40’s and low 50’s. We were able to get out with the Jeep last Tuesday and I had a fun day planned. My head cold was getting better and I was looking for a fun day out on a trail.

I chose an easy trail that would take us to Pioneer Town where there is suppose to be a neat place for lunch. Pioneer Town is an old movie set that has all the buildings and has a restaurant called Pappy and Harriet’s that is suppose to be a unique place. I checked the menu online and they seemed to have the typical bar food plus steaks and BBQ.

Starting out on the trail

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The trail was 35 miles long and was really rocky the first 15 miles. At about the 15 mile mark, Max asked me if I brought any tools just in case we broke down somewhere along the trail or something went wrong with the Jeep. Ummmm, Ahhhhhhh, Hmmmmm, No, but we will be okay I assured her. It’s a new Jeep after all!  Big sigh’s from the passenger seat………

It was not 3 minutes later that I noticed  the check engine light had come on. Everything seemed to be running fine, all the gages looked good. I knew it was karma, because usually when Max ask me if I had prepared properly and my answer was no, that I usually get bit. She has a canny way of using that women’s intuition thing.

She pulls out the manual to read about check engine lights, something about steady state versus flashing lights, Blah, Blah, Blah, of course I did the manly thing and checked to make sure we had cell phone coverage, yup, we will be safe if we break down, I can call Chrysler and tell them to come get us, plus we have a gallon of water and 25 granola bars. Life is good!  As I was going through my survival mode just in case, Max determined that we could continue on driving as long as it was a steady light and we would not do any harm.

As we continued down our trail, we enjoyed the surroundings.

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As we were driving, I told Max that I looked at the menu of the restaurant where we were headed, but I did not check their hours of operation. I said wouldn’t it be funny if they were closed!  Of course her reaction was like…. no, it would not be funny, and  I can’t believe you looked at the menu but did not check to see if they were open. I reassured her that everything would be fine, It’s a Tuesday for crying out loud, who wouldn’t be open. Our plan was to go straight to the Chrysler dealer in Yucca Valley then head back for lunch.

We made it to the Chrysler dealer and they checked the codes that were set by the check engine light. Then came the bad news. They said that it would require a new left cylinder head.

Really! 580 miles and it needs a new head!!! They said Chrysler had been having some issues and they had replacement heads but they were currently on back order. Not feeling the Jeep love about now, I asked them if it would hurt the engine more by driving it. They said no, that it is just a miss fire condition in cyl no. 6, and it is okay to drive it. They said that I probably would not even have known about it if the light didn’t tell me.

So the dealer is set up to call me when the back order head comes in. By now we were not in a great mood but decided to make lemonade and head over to the restaurant in Pioneer Town. We arrived at the town and quickly discovered that the restaurant was closed! Really!Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays…. Karma I tell you!

We went back into Yucca Valley and found a Pizza Hut for lunch, then made the hour drive back up to Big Bear Lake. We will make it back to Pioneer Town but not until after the Jeep is fixed and I have a set of tools in the back…and it’s not a Monday or Tuesday. Just sayin…

I did get our latest Jeep modification done this week as well.

My father used to build boats as a hobby and he would name them MIASSIS with a dragon flag. (Miassis Dragon). He passed away when he was 54 years old, when I was 20 years old. Since then, every toy I have ever bought, Boats, motorcycles etc..had MIASSIS DRAGON located somewhere on it, kind of my way of keeping dad with me.

On the Goldwing air wing I have this.

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For the Jeep we just installed this.

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For now I am still waiting for my head to clear up and for the back order head to come in. Until then we will be staying close to the campground on our days off. I learned some valuable lesson’s this week.

1. Bring tools just in case.

2. If you are taking your wife to lunch, make sure the place is open

3. Don’t mess with a women’s intuition.

Enjoy Your Day

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

what about a honda Jeep they keep on going and going Kent

Steve and Joan said...

Phew! I'm tired just thinking about all that weed eating. Our Jeep may not have a lot of tools but we do carry a shovel and pair of gloves.

Betty Graffis said...

With all that weed eating, Im wondering if you also have a bunch of allergies plaguing you. I would agree with your 1.2.3. lessons learned. :)

owensontheroad said...

Lol, I coulda told you that. A woman is always right! Max just should have said all these things before you turned the key :-) Hope you feel better, and it is not allergies from all that weed eating.

Mike and Terri said...

A weed eater to cut the grass? Really?? Wow!

Good for you on your lessons learned. LOL!


Paul and Marti Dahl said...

Sorry to hear your Jeep has given you a headache! :cO

Tom and Marci said...

We're beginning to think that people who own campgrounds have zero common sense. Tom's just getting started at our new gig, and he says that's one thing he's not going to do - weedwacking!