Three Strikes and You're Out!

Wes and I came awfully close to reaching the third strike with our vehicles in one day...and it wasn't fun. My beloved first car unexpectedly (although that's usually how it works with these things) broke down when Wes was on his way to a job site. Now this car, a Ford Escort, has been a trooper for us. We've abused it over and over, and it keeps on running without much of a peep! I got it with 65,000 miles on it for a very good price ($3600) and it's now got 189,000 miles on it. There have been about two times when we've needed to have small repairs done on it, and then the regular maintenance, but it's never been costly. Once a car approaches 200K miles on it, it's inevitable that it's getting very close to the end. So, the car sputtered out on the side of the road. With limited options, Wes decided to pull our very, very old truck that we've used solely for hauling firewood out of the garage to pick up our car and tow it back to our trusty Two Harbors auto mechanics at Reliable Auto. Amazingly both the truck and the car made it there! I could hardly believe it, because our truck is, well, far from being reliable. Once are car was dropped off at the "car ER," Wes drove our rusty old truck toward home. He almost made it, except about 50 feet from our front porch, the back wheel fell off and rolled past Wes as he came to an abrupt stop. So in the end, a tow was inevitable and two vehicles ended up in the shop.

Here is a shot of the tower putting all his weight into jacking our truck up off the road. He had quite a time trying to figure out how to tow the truck without its back wheel.