So about that streak of bad luck…

As I mentioned before, David went to Kansas on Friday to pick up our pinball machine. He made it there safely and was happy with the machine itself. The seller helped him get it secured in the trailer and ready for the trip home. When he was about 2 hours away and almost to Perryton, the suburban quit. And wouldn’t go anywhere. The day after we spent $1700 on it.  What the heck??

To make a long, sad story shorter and less sad, he had it towed to a mechanic in Perryton. It took two trucks—one for the trailer he was hauling and one for the suburban. Thankfully he was only a few miles outside of town because it was a pretty costly tow! Based on the word of the tow guy, they took it to a man with a garage on his home property. The mechanic decided to go ahead and look at it, even though it was way past business hours on Friday night. He determined the problem very quickly and said he could have it repaired the next day. It was bad bearing(s)? in the rear differential. Whatever that means!

In the meanwhile, I called to see if we could borrow BJ’s truck to pull the suburban and trailer to a safer location because we had been unable to locate a tow truck. Then we wanted to bring the borrowed trailer back home. Bj thought Brandt’s truck might be better for the job, so he called and asked to borrow it. Bj came by and picked me up and we drove in Brandt’s huge diesel truck to Perryton.  We finally got to David at midnight then drove a bit more slowly home, arriving about 3.

True to his word, the mechanic called Saturday afternoon and had completed the repairs. I never dreamed we’d even know what the problem was this quickly, much less have it fixed. We drove to pick it up and had an uneventful drive home that evening. Hopefully, things will stay that way for a while!!**Edited to Add: The garage door broke as we walked out to go to church this morning. No. I'm not kidding!

Now to the good stuff! We got the pinball machine unloaded and into the house. We’ve all determined that we stink at pinball, but look forward to getting better. The machine itself is a bit rough—it is a 1980 model. Some of the mechanics have been redone, but much or all of the artwork, etc. is original. It seems to work great. David’s thrilled with it and thinks it is a great addition to our game room. Lance keeps saying how fun it is that we’re going “retro” with our game room. I never thought about it being retro, but I guess it is. Ha! (Course Hadley wanted to borrow my old ipod because she thinks the classic ones are cool! How retro can an ipod be??) Guess it’s all relative…