I dropped my truck off at Price Autoplex & Trans Rebuild last Monday, and got it back on Friday with a new torque converter and a few other minor transmission parts, totaling about $1,400. That’s the most I’ve ever had to drop on this truck for repairs. Overall, it’s been a pretty good vehicle, but it’s just about time to upgrade to something a little bigger that fits my family better.
It’s been a fun few weeks of mechanical problems. My 4-wheeler is at the Honda dealer getting fixed. I stripped the oil drain hole, and they’ve had my machine there for almost two weeks now. I was told that it would be about a week before they could even look at it, but I wouldn’t imagine it should take this long. This weekend, my kids were rough-housing in the living room while my laptop was sitting on the coffee table, and apparently one of them kicked the computer and crashed the hard drive. I spent a lot of time trying to get it back up and running, but I eventually gave up and ordered a new hard drive. I’m still hoping to recover some data, but I don’t think I can do it while trying to run the operating system off that same hard drive. It’s been since October 2010 that I last backed up, so I stand to lose a lot of data. 🙁
Over the 4th of July weekend, Chris stayed at my house. We spent Friday night finding a couple of geocaches and walking around Price getting into trouble. 😉 We all went rappelling in Spring Canyon on Sunday. Chris and I first rappelled single-strand off a roughly 90-foot drop. Chris went first, testing his anchoring skills and sizing up the transition to free-hanging about two-thirds of the way down. I rappelled second, stopping on the ledge just before the free-hanging part and leaving a geocache there. We then moved to another (easier) rappel of about 50 or 60 feet, where Traci and Karin descended the cliff. We tried getting Michael and Bradley to rappel, and they seemed eager to at first, but each one changed his mind when he got clipped in to the rope and started backing toward the cliff’s edge. We took them to Pioneer Park the next day and got them each to rappel off a 10′ wall with ease, and I think the next time we’re in Spring Canyon they won’t hesitate to try the cliff there.
We did the traditional 4th of July family barbecue at my mom’s house on Monday. I think we had more people there than ever before, with all the siblings and our kids, both grandpas, and some friends. We started viewing the county’s fireworks show from Westridge, but got rained out by the sprinklers about halfway through the show. I don’t think anyone was truly disappointed, since we didn’t really go there for the fireworks. We finished off the night by doing our own fireworks first at my mom’s, then at my sister’s house after being chased away by a pissy neighbor.
It was a good weekend, but damn, I’m ready to get away from town, up into the mountains. Traci is taking the kids to her family reunion this weekend, and I’m still debating what to do. I suppose it depends on whether I’ve got my ATV back by Friday, but either way, I hope to spend some time at high elevations, preferably near some snow, this weekend.