Old Vans and Gods Plans

[Cathe Frederic]

 

Thank you God for getting me home from Lincoln City safe today! After dropping Chris and PJ off for camp I headed East towards Grand Ronde on Highway 101. About 12 miles later the car started slowing down, pulling to the right and suddenly from the left front tire, came clouds of stinky smoke!

 

I pulled into the next driveway which happend to be an auto repair shop. The guy that owned it became very agitated when I asked for a little help. It seems he was late for a previous enguagement. So I asked to borrow some chocks for the wheels.

 

After placing the chocks, I removed the lugnuts, jacked up the car and proceded to bleed the brake line. Nothing happened. Calliper still had a death grip on the drum. No amount of rotating the wheel helped either because I could barely turn it. I called AAA to see if I could get a tow. I wasn't even sure if I had remembered to renew my membership.

 

While waiting two young men pulled in and asked if they could help. I told them what was wrong and they offered to try and break the calliper loose. (Meanwhile I found out my AAA membership had indeed expired.) Using my socket extention as a lever this nice man broke the calliper loose after a few tries. I thanked them and handed them two of my walking sticks as a thanks. They both laughed and said they carved walking sticks too! But they thanked me profusely for mine.

 

I climbed back into the car and drove the next 20 miles using the emergency brake and shifting to stop and go. Made it home after an exhausting drive.

 

Sundays job? Replace the front left brake calliper.

 

As Rosanne Rosana Dana said, "It's always something!"

Kung FU!