We made it out, but not far

It took another full week, and weekend, for the issue with Big Blue to finally get resolved. That makes three full weeks we lived in an AAMCO parking lot in the greater Las Vegas area which included Xmas, new years, and our five year anniversary. Before anything I say about this shop gets taken as negative, the guys at this shop were amazing to us. They were locked into a particular path with the national warranty, and lost a lot of money getting us back on the road. In the end, they replaced the entire rear end with one found from a salvage yard (at additional cost to them), something I could have done myself for under $600 – we spent $3500 on the first repair, plus two tows, numerous nights in hotels, and a fair amount on Lyft rides. The shop back in California is where I lay the bulk of the blame, and they are the only party that have not lost a ton of money on this whole ordeal. I will be working on that issue with corporate this coming week.

Nevertheless, we got underway again on Monday night, but only got as far as Lake Mead (Kerri has never been here but I have) which is barely out of Vegas-metro. It was our planned stop, just to give us an easy place to spend the upcoming work week. It is also somewhat of a security blanket after repeated breakdowns after supposed fixes in the recent month. Unfortunately, as we arrived here the smoking driver’s side brakes made it clear that we were not going any further until I did a little work myself. It is an easy enough job – just got to back the brake shoes off the drum a little and we should be fine. We would have preferred our first night on the road to have gone without further incident, but at least this one I can resolve on my own without having to go back into town.