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*Fixing a broken thing...*

It's official: We are now the proud owners of a broken vehicle!

It's tax return time, which in the US means that with five children and a low enough income you get enough money given to you to pay off a truck. (Commentary on this eventually...)

Said truck is still currently not running. I think I have it narrowed down to a fuel pump issue. So while the new fuel pump is in transit I get the fun task of removing the fuel tank to get the old pump out. Good times.

After several hours of frustrating work attempting the tank removal (i.e. siphoning the tank and not much else) the wife informed me that the alternator on the other owned vehicle was officially kaput. Yay. So yesterday instead of finishing the pump removal it was alternator replacement day. Thankfully the wife has small hands and I didn't have to do much wrench turning.

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*You should have seen my hands.*

After a successful replacement we spent our core return money on new spark plugs, oil, and some entirely-too-fancy wiper blades (apparently seeing is important to driving). Those are all today's jobs. After pizza delivering. And schooling the kids. And cleaning up something.

Come to think of it, this is going to stretch out over the whole weekend...

Even though things break, it does feel good to own something instead of dealing with payments every month and trying to make money stretch. Instead we just become mechanics at the YouTube School for Those Who Can't Mechanic Good and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too.

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*There is more to life than really really really ridiculously good mechanicing...*

A Haynes manual is helpful too...

We have done the summer season out west twice already. Both times we had to travel separately and spend weeks apart while waiting for issues to resolve. The first year was a horrific RV experience, last year was a terrible buying experience for a truck to pull our trailer. This year we hope to beat our record and actually leave together. I plan to document the experience as much as I can this year, just so I can look back later. And maybe entertain some folks in the meantime.

It's a slow adventure, but it's happening. At least I don't have to make any more car payments... For now.