The Best Laid Plans

What’s that saying about “best laid plans”? First off we still don’t have the Jeep back – should have it by 10:30 this morning. I will believe it when I see it drive in and park next to me.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a small car pull up to Ms. Tioga and a couple got out and knocked on George’s door. He invited them in and they had a long visit. They are from Alaska and have been reading his blog for a long time and they just happened to be vacationing in Mazatlan right now. So they wanted to meet him.

In the mean time we were waiting for John and Carol to show up. They should have been here in Mazatlan around 3:00 – Soon it was 5:00 and we hadn’t heard from them and they weren’t here. George brought his new friends over to meet us and mentioned they would like to go out to Fat Fish for ribs with all of us. We were starting to worried about John not being here. So we called his cell phone – the only number we had was his Idaho cell – we got a “this phone is not in service” reply. We know he has a cell he uses in Mexico and couldn’t find its number……George checked his address book and didn’t have a different number either. It would soon be dark – time to really worry. We finally decided that if they had had problems flat etc. and it took a while to fix they would have not driven on if it meant driving at night. So we decided to go ahead and go out to dinner. The five of us squeezed into the little car George’s friends had rented and went to Fat Fish for RIBS for dinner.

When we got back to the RV park John and Carol were there. We were so glad to see them. Why didn’t you call? Well they had tried to call us and no one was answering the phone. They were calling our house in Indiana….We tried to call them – but no service. No that wasn’t right that number just rolled over to the cell phone he was using. Checked the number….Duh – I’d reversed the numbers of the area code – no wonder they weren’t answering. And the only phone number they had for George was his Skype number. Talk about a CF.

Any way an angel was sitting on their shoulders yesterday and several Mexican angels were around them. About 100 north of their starting point bright and early yesterday morning there is a Fito Sanitario – produce check point. Everyone gets stopped there – it was where we met the official whose only words in English were “Open Please.” But back to their story. As they were pulling out of the check point Carol heard a PSSST – She told John to stop that a tire had just gone flat. He stopped and sure enough a flat on the 5^th wheel. As he was changing the tire Carol walked past the bed of the truck and noticed the 5^th wheel was lying on the truck. She called John over to look. Part of the hitch had broken. Thank goodness they had to stop for the flat. A couple of big rig truckers stopped at the check point had come over to help with the tire. They finished changing it while John went to talk to the officials. Luckily there was some construction going on at the check point – some welding. They talked to one of the welders he took a look at the hitch and thought he could fix it if he could get off work and if they could get the rig to his house. His boss told him he could quit for the day and John followed him to his house. John says other vehicles did not appreciate that he was only driving 20 mph on the Autopista (toll road.) But they made it to the house and the man was able to do some weld it enough that they made it to here. By the time they finally left there around 5:00 they still had almost 100 more miles to Mazatlan.

So they had pulled into the park just before we got home from eating. About 7:30. John's RV train.

They are still here today. In the morning light John found another crack in the hitch. So they are waiting for a repair man to come this afternoon to see if he can fix it. Sounds like they might spend the weekend here – want to or not.

Bill called the Jeep dealer at 10:30 and Willie is still not ready – maybe by noon. If not then…Monday????

At least the weather is beautiful. Warm sunny and not windy.