Postcard from New Mexico- 5

6 May 2012- Santa Fe

The truck

We may at long last have the Banks issues behind us. Spear's Auto Center in Cedar Crest ordered a replacement main Banks harness and installed it a few days later (last Thursday). I've put a few miles on the truck since then and it feels like we may have put Paid to that worry. The truck runs smooth, all the power ranges work, mileage is consistent, no hesitations, no fault codes from either Ford or Banks. Just seems to run as it should!

Time to fuel-up.

The new glasses

I wonder if you recall this from an old childhood rhyme:

"I see!" said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw!

That's pretty much how I felt when I first looked through the new lenses in my glasses. Seems to be clear vision without all the head twisting and searching for focus. Looks like LensCrafters came through again. Hallelujah! And Celia can read the road signs again. Yee haw! I've got my navigator back!

The dogs

Got the girls over to Paws Plaza Saturday (they're on 4th just off Cerrillos). They're a doggie day care center that also does grooming. Our girls had to be bathed and have their nails trimmed and this is our preferred place to go. Felt sorry for Michelle, the groomer who had the daunting chore of making them look presentable. She said Annie was really dirty which is not a surprise: if Annie finds herself going somewhere she doesn't want to go, she just lays down on her back no matter where she happens to be.

With the dogs clean, Celia wanted to get to the vet for a quick health check and to also make sure we have some proof of rabies vaccination just in case we head up to Canada on the way back. That made it a good time to get more dog food. Sadly, the Smith Veterinary pantry was bare. They ordered more of the special-diet food for us but it can't arrive before Wednesday. So we have a new departure date.

The rig

Celia has the rig as spotless as humanly possible. Walls scrubbed, windows washed, dust vacuumed from the nooks and crannies, throw rugs washed. I was afraid to stand in one place too long for fear of going for a spin in the washing machine myself!

All this Spring cleaning is a must-do after accumulating road grime from using the rig 24/7. Going to make a nice start to our trek East.

The groceries

Of course no road trip can start unless you get to do some extra shopping. [ Aaarrrggh! I hate shopping! ] The pantry is bursting with 'stuff' and I'm wondering if we'll ever have to see the inside of another WalMart as long as we live! Which is nonsense of course... we'll go there again before we hit the road. A good thing is we ran into Celia's friend Nora and we were able to update each pther before we had to move on.

Given the choice, we always try to shop first at a Trader Joe's. TJ's is a semi-specialty store owned by a German corp (forgotten the name). Their prices are set nationally instead of locally (all the market will bare). If you're in a pricey area like Santa Fe, they can be substantially cheaper than a big super market like Albertson's. Things like nuts, cereal, soy ice cream, organic olive oil, organic fresh veggies, nitrate-/nitrite-free luncheon meat, etc. can all be expensive in the usual chain store (if they have it at all).

The schedule

I had hoped we'd be on our way this coming Wednesday morning, 9 May. Looks like that can't happen now. The extra 4 bags of dog food (40 kg) should arrive on Wednesday, so we hope to be on our way on Thursday, 5/10. 'Should' is the operative word... it's a euphemism for 'I don't know when the dog food will arrive but I hope it's Wednesday'. So I'm reluctant to make any reservations till I have the bags stowed in the basement

To put a positive spin on things, we're supposed to have T-storms starting Monday, so maybe we'll get a few of those out of the way before heading East.

The photos

Yeah, I know. I've been remiss in posting photos. We have a serious bandwidth problem and uploading images makes it worse. When we get a better location I'll edit earlier posts and sprinkle some photos throughout. Mea culpa!