Paul misses Christmas and New Year's

I may have arrived home Dec 19th but poor Paul is still on the road. He made a couple extra little stops on the way but the biggest adventure was a blown transmission.

Paul and Ben are driving two trucks, 4000 miles, from Las Vegas to Homer Alaska. Sounds okay but not so simple. Even though Paul had his truck checked out the transmission didn't last. On Christmas day it blew 120 miles south of Fort Nelson, BC Canada. It's pretty cold there, -26 degrees.

There were a few glitches in making the repair. The mechanic couldn't find a transmission in Edmonton but Paul found one in the Anchorage area on Craig's List. They found a man in Homer coming their way to bring it to them. Unfortunately that turned out to be for a 4-wheel drive and wouldn't work in his truck. He found another in Prince George, about 500 miles back down the road. So, on New Year's Eve day, they hit the road and drove to pick up the transmission. THEN, they turned around and drove back on New Year's Day. The roads were empty and they were fortunate that they didn't break down, again, lol.

Now the mechanic can get to work and meanwhile Paul goes to the parts store to buy block heaters for the 2 trucks. The man at the parts store said he didn't need them and sent him on his way. The good news is that the mechanic found a broken starter mount and replaced that before it caused another break down. The bad news is that they really needed the block heaters.

They got on the road in 9 days only to be broken down in the next town. The batteries froze and neither truck would start. Now they were back in the shop to have block heater, pan heater and 2 battery blankets installed on the 2 trucks. They even had to sleep without heat at the one and only motel because they had run out of propane.

The good news is, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, Oh yeah, they were safe, healthy, and saw several critters on the road. Paul called last night and said he made it into Alaska. It looks like they will be home on Friday afternoon, Woo-Hoo!!! The weather report last night said there is freezing rain on snow in Anchorage which is causing many accidents so I'm praying for their safe travel on this last leg of a difficult trip.