After not sleeping especially well, worrying about making it to the grand opening event in Yuma  today, I awoke early. First on the agenda was coffee. Next I put in a call to Bill over at Premier Transmissions  for an update on the RV.

What I was hoping to hear was that the RV was fixed and ready to go so we could make our event. The folks in Yuma were really excited about adding the RV and the story of our journey to their event and had lined up press to cover it. They were all expecting the RV and me to be there along with the stagecoach to celebrate the grand opening.

On a personal note, I knew that Marge Rice had really been instrumental in setting this up, and I really didn't want to let her down. Marge is "the bomb"  and has been a great partner helping with all things marketing for this great adventure. I had no control over the RV's mechanical problems, obviously. But, not making the event would have been the first failure of the journey. And because I had become so personally staked out of necessity in its fortunes, its failure was my failure.

There is no way I could pull this trip off with all the long hours of research and planning and finally all the hours put in on the road up to this point unless I had embraced it completely and utterly. And I have. This has become a labor of love and to use another tired cliché, my baby. And not to be able to share my "baby" with all those folks in Yuma was terribly disappointing.

Luckily, Ormsby never had Transmissions trouble. The biggest delays his historic trip suffered were at the hands of unruly and uncooperative wild mules. And here I was with all my modern technology delayed and behind schedule. But I held out hope.

Unfortunately the call to Bill did not go as I had hoped. Despite all the hard work and extra hours his men put into fixing the old clunker (and they stayed late last night trying to fix it), an unexpected problem delayed the works completion. He tried to explain what the problem was, but he may has well been speaking Latin. As I stated before, mechanics is not my thing and all I heard was, "Blah blah blah Transmissions blah blah case blah blah blah I'll have it done by 2:00pm."

Well 2:00pm was too late. Now, I had the unfortunate task of calling Marge and Teresa Mosley of the new Yuma store and delivering the bad news. They were both disappointed but very understanding and for that I was grateful.

Soon Bill and the team at Premier Transmissions completed their work. I have to tell you, mechanics sometimes get a bad rap but Premier Transmissions is first rate. Bill kept me up to speed on what was going on, and, understanding and appreciating the nature of my journey, worked really hard to get us back on the road as soon as possible. Before we found them our options had been bad and worse. But Bill saw to it that the work was done quickly at a very reasonable price, always with my safety and the success of the rest of the trip in mind.

I can't thank him enough, but I can say that if you are in Phoenix and need some work done, you can't make a better choice than Premier Transmissions.

With the RV fixed and the mail safe and secure, I was on my way again. Destination, Yuma, Arizona!