December 29, 2005

December 29, 2005

Benson, Arizona

YEAR 2 DAY 195

 

Today was sunny and warm, with a bit of a wind. It's about 10 degrees cooler in Benson than it was in Yuma because Benson is at a much higher altitude, about 3600 feet.

Late last night a pack of coyotes started howling to one another right outside our trailer. Bo was freaked !

This morning while I had breakfast Joanne went to the office and registered us to stay for a week. I phoned Aamco in Tucson to arrange to have the rear differential leak repaired. Aamco in Tucson is unable / unwilling to do the work. They claim that working on rear differentials is outside their scope. I find that ludicrous for a transmission shop. Removing and replacing a rear differential cover with a new gasket is hardly rocket science. I phoned Aamco in Yuma, to discuss with them how this leaking differential problem is best solved. They agree with me about Aamco in Tucson. I spoke to Aamco in Yuma a number of different times today, as we tried to figure out the best way to deal with this problem.

We went to the clubhouse, where I checked in the yellow pages to verify that there was indeed no Aamco Transmission shop nearby. Joanne checked notices on the bulletin board, and got some information about the New Year's Eve party here. I unhitched the truck from the trailer and we drove into town to pick up our mail. We were expecting 5 pieces of mail at General Delivery. There were three. I surmise that one has not yet arrived, and one had been returned to sender after being held at General Delivery for a month. We were expecting to be here in Benson earlier than this. When we returned to the trailer I phoned Passport America to have them resend our membership renewal package again, this time to Deming, New Mexico. We'll pick it up there late next week. Hopefully the last batch of mail that Sharon recently sent will arrive here in Benson within a week.

During lunch we opened the box of Christmas presents from my sister and her family that was one of the pieces of mail we picked up. Thank you, Sharon, Bud, and Andrea for the very nice gifts. We appreciate your thoughtfulness. I did preventive maintenance and a few other minor maintenance chores. We took Bo for an obedience walk. I very reluctantly went with Joanne to a ballroom dancing class in the clubhouse. We phoned Sharon to thank her for the gifts. While Joanne prepared supper, I downloaded and processed yesterday's photos from Organ Pipe National Park.

My last call from Aamco in Yuma late in the afternoon was to confirm an appointment for me to have the leaking differential problem dealt with 9 days from now in Las Cruces, New Mexico. That's the nearest Aamco heading east.

We had supper, and wasted an evening squabbling.

I just went for a late night walk ( 1:00 A.M. ). Gee ... the position of the Big Dipper in the sky sure seems "wrong" down here.

DSK