Too Much Work, Too Little Time

[kevin_standlee]

It has been an excessively interesting day, but if I'm going to get any sleep tonight, I won't be able to write about it in the detail it deserves.

Lisa spent more than six hours working on the Big Orange Van, replacing a kinked fuel tank vent hose and a split fuel line, and at one point briefly set the van's engine on fire. (Fortunately, she has a small halon-type extinguisher and no harm was done.) While the vehicle still needs lots of work, at least it's moving again. Because of how badly beat-up her hands got after that, she's postponed work on the small pickup for a few days.

We took the rental van into Reno and closed out the Moana Lane storage locker. Turns out they refund the unused rental days, so I'm only actually out a few extra days' rent and the $10 key deposit for having lost the original key. We pulled everything out and hauled it to Fernley. The garage/workshop is now looking very full of boxes. I'm glad we had the rental truck for this because I don't think we could have fit the locker's entire contents into my van, even with all the seats but the two forward ones removed.

Finally getting back to the trailer in Fernley, I checked the train status, and as of late Tuesday night, it was still looking like my 8:36 AM train out of Reno would be here about that time. Seeing me fret over schedules, Lisa suggested that we go into Reno, drop off the rental truck at the Budget night drop, and spend the night at Circus Circus, which is walking distance from the Amtrak station. This option looked even better after I called CC Reno and found they were offering $32 rates. We packed up again and Lisa and I convoyed into Reno. I got the rental truck dropped in the last available night space, we went to CC Reno, had a very annoying experience getting Security to let the Big Orange Van into the over-height vehicle lot, and after checking in to the room went for a late dinner at the Eldorado.

And believe it or not, the above really is the digest version. Good night!

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

It's one of the perils of owning/operating older vehicles, whether you put high mileages on them or just leave them sitting is that you spend your life fixing them up as stuff wears out or just ages and decays.

At one point in my life I owned seven vehicles; a van, a car and five motorbikes. I spent pretty much every weekend fixing something that had broken and at no point were all of them roadworthy at one time. I also spent a fortune on parts and fuel shuttling them around to carry out repairs and I never actually had the pleasure of using them much. Eventually I thinned the herd and bought newer cars and vans rather than getting them cheap and repairing them myself as life is too short.