Life Has A Few Negatives Too

Last week started with a short drive from Victory Tabernacle to Prevost Ft. Worth last Monday. Before we left I captured a picture of this little creature.

Kelly Jo quickly became his friend but he was not very enamored with us.

This is where we were parked all though City Reach Ft. Worth.

35-40 minutes after we left, we pulled into Prevost. The shop was not open for business that Monday but they were expecting us to go in and get parked. That is exactly what we did.

I write a whole lot here about great services, folks getting saved, people being healed, good friends, great food and a whole lot more good stuff that happens in our lives. We are tremendously blessed and we are very thankful.

But we are normal people with normal problems and normal bad days. Nothing in this life can be positive all the time. Our life may seem out of balance to those of you that read regularly because I write so much about blessings, smiles and good times. I am not exaggerating one ounce when I tell you how good God is to us on a day to day basis. 

It may be that I am doing you a disservice by not showing you the other side of the coin. However, it is difficult to write about the negatives because it is easy to come across as complaining. I honestly have nothing to complain about at all.

This is simply the full report. When the BoggsMobile is needing repair, that can be very stressful for me. I usually do not feel positive in times like that. I am not depressed, I am not about to quit, I am not discouraged with God, but shop days are nerve-wracking days for me. 

Hey, knowing you are spending several thousand dollars in a day and a half is enough to make any one anxious. For you it may be a leaking roof, a sagging porch, a busted water heater or a central air unit going out in July. For me, it is a bus! That is life, right?

They got us in early Tuesday morning. Soon the BoggsMobile was up in the air again.

We were there to take care of the anomaly in the air system that we experienced on our first day of travel from California to Texas. The consensus from the experts was that one or more of four relay valves was going bad. Two of them have been replaced so I was having the other two replaced. It is possible the problem was just a fluke but Jeff Rowe considered it more of a warning sign. If one of those valves goes kaput, then the bus is dead in the water. That is not good!

While they had the bus in the air, they noticed both tag wheel seals were leaking. Those are Must Fix items because dry wheel bearings will lock up, start a fire and burn a bus to the ground. It happens with alarming regularity so it is something to watch carefully.

I also noticed one of the chains on the tag axle was hanging down. This little "thingamahoochie" was broken. They replaced that as well.

They also replaced the brake pads on the tags too.

It ended up being a 15+ hour job with all three shifts working on the bus by the time they were finished.

I knew my tag tires would need to be replaced this year and in January I realized the four drive tires would need to be replaced as well. I was really hoping to make it until next year but Tuesday I came face to face with reality. The tags were on the front for three years and then on the tag for two years. They were in really bad, bad shape.

Michelin tires are the best choice for these buses and they are very expensive. I belong to a program with great discounts on Michelin tires and I am glad I do. I called Michelin and got a recommendation on where to get them. It was the same place Prevost told me about.

I have purchased tires from TCI in other locations across the country. 

I called the one in Lancaster and they had the Michelins in stock with recent date codes and they had time to get me in the shop. I first thought I would be there Tuesday afternoon but since we were at Prevost until 11:00 PM, I changed the appointment to Wednesday morning.

I knew I was in the right place when James said to me, "Tell me how you want this done. How do you want us to jack it and if we are doing it wrong, don't be afraid to tell us."

All six tires have the date code of 1116. That is the 11th week of 2016. That is pretty recent.

The reason the date is important to me is that for RV tires, age is very important. Most folks will never wear the tread out on a motor home tire but if the tires are too old, they will come apart in a catastrophic way. I learned that lesson the hard way on our first fifth wheel on a very cold December day in 1992. Ouch!

Age on my car tires are not that important because in 2-3 years they will be wore out from miles driven. If the "new" bus tires have been sitting in a wharehouse for 2 years then their actual life on the bus is shortened. 

They moved the front tires to the tag and all the rest are now new.

It was about a two hour process but it was pleasant and the work was completed properly. The office had some problems with the paperwork but we finally left there about 12:30. We barely made it north of Dallas and I pulled over, done for the day!

Thursday we finished the trip to Tulsa and Kelly Jo and I went to work on finalizing the permitting process for City Reach Tulsa. We have been working on this literally for months but a few hours of smiling and talking and talking and smiling finally lit a fire under the right person and we had the permit by Friday mid morning.

Oh, but I get ahead of myself. Thursday evening we went to Los Cabos for a wonderful Mexican food fix and Odie snapped some pictures. Wow it was good!

We parked in Broken Arrow at South Mission's new location. They are remodeling the building and are not having church there yet. It was a great place to park.

That brings you up to date. We have positive and we have negative and that makes for a happy and blessed life. God is good all the time, even in our minor adversities!

Thanks for reading.

Davy