We limped into my mom’s driveway early afternoon on May 15th happy to be able to put our oil coated levelers down somewhere familiar.
Because: oil.
It’s still everywhere.
I (Liz) grew up a few towns over from where my mom now resides in a lovely old house on the main street of a tiny town in the Southern Tier of NY.
I was pretty stoked to see that the lilacs were blooming when we pulled in. It’s been a few years since I’ve smelled lilacs.
We spent a few weeks poking around in Dyna’s innards. Well, realistically, Jake & my brother poked around in the innards. I avoided that like sauerkraut (I hate sauerkraut). Our hopes were high for a week or two that maybe a rebuild wasn’t actually necessary. Maybe the dirt party wasn’t the rager that we feared. Maybe it was a loose hose. Or a faulty something else.
In between Dyna poking, we got to spend time playing with family.
My sister came home for a weekend. I loved that.
We spent time working in my mom’s yard. And my brother’s yard.
We went to trivia night with my dad and his buddies. We lost.
We ate pizza and ice cream.
We watched movies with my mom.
We hiked and went to local festivals.
We put off the inevitable. Until we couldn’t any longer. And then we called the local (Elmira) Cummins shop.
Good news: they quoted us $13k for a full rebuild. And when you’ve been quoted $23k for the same job, I will vouch that $13k suddenly sounds like a hell of a deal.
So, we made arrangements to drop our beloved beast off at Cummins.
Now I know that you are probably welling up with tears for us right now. Because, yeah, spending money you do not have on an engine which theoretically should have taken us across the nation 50 more times before having issues sucks. But, you can dry your tears now.
Because we ditched Dyna at that Cummins shop… And are flying out of NYC to spend a week on the British Virgin Island of Tortola with some of our best friends.
Oh, and after that we’re going to spend 10 days on a sail boat.
So, yeah. We’re pretty damned lucky.
Bye Dyna! And Cummins geniuses – please take good care of her.