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2005

This is for everyone who thinks our job is easy.

We normaly start off from Surrey with two trucks and 2 trailers bringing up the crew, office supplies and a forklift to make life a lot easier for everyone.

When we arrive there are 2 - 53' trailers loaded with auction sale items waiting to be unloaded. Once that is done the sale must be setup, items displayed, items put together, items lotted, items cleaned and of course the items must be sold.

Everything started out normaly on our early fall 2005 trip to the Armstrong Sale. We left at about 2:30pm and all went well until we reached the Coldwater Hill on the Merrit side of th "cok" highway. Looked in the rear view mirror and we can no longer see our Ford pickup with the camper and trailer following us.

So, after a time of waiting, we found a turn around spot (sometimes not so easy when you have a truck and a trailer with a forklift on it). After finding one - back we go in the wrong direction - and finaly we spot the truck and trailer part way up the hill with Ruth and John out flagging traffic.

When we arrived we are told that the truck made a big "klunk" and that was it. Looking under the truck we discovered a hole in the rear end cover plate indicating to us that the darn thing just plane old blowed up. The truck being a 4x4, we dropped the drive shaft to the rear end and tried it, still no go.

Thanks to cel phones we were able to involve our son "the Auctioneer" in our little problem and he trys our list of friend in the tow truck business and after hearing that they are either broken down themselves or very busy they passed on some advice to us.

Calling on our friend "Klaus" who came out with no hesitation from Westbank to help us pull a trailer if we needed to - we go back to the truck and start pulling the rear axles - off we go again on our way to Armstrong and arrive there a little after mid-nite.

We had the auction in armstrong with a group of great auction going people.

Ah, it's Sunday morning and at a little after 11 we start for home.

Ruth and I have now switched vehicles and I drive the Ford and she drives the Dodge. Just a little south of Vernon, overlooking Kalamalka Lake, the front drive u-joint decides to quit working for us and leaves us on the side of the road again.

This time we call friend Brian and son Dave (Dave was just driving home from a weekend of camping south of Kelowna, when he got the call). They responded in no time, came up with tools and removed the drive shaft then it was back to Dave's shop in Kelowna we go. (to quote tony the tiger - Dave's shop, Coast PowerTrain Kelowna Ltd. - were grrrreeeeeaaaat)

We couldn't get it fixed on Sunday because there was too much damage and the shop was closed. They needed to rebuild the drive shaft so Dave set it up so it will be worked on first thing at 7am. By 10am it is being shipped back to us with Bryan. Bryan phones us and asks what we want in our morning coffee's then he is on the way to us. By 11:00am we are back driving the truck down the road and decided to take the truck in for a few more repairs so we left the truck in Kelowna. We finally arrived home at 9:30 pm Monday nite 33 hours after we started out.

It is now Friday and we are going back to Kelowna to bring our old beloved Ford back home and make this trip complete.

We sure do want to thank all our faboulus FRIENDS that sure did change their plans and came to our rescue without any hesitation.

A special thanks to Klaus for help on the way up, Brian and David for the help on the way back, Rick, Cindy and little Northern Dancer (picture at top of page) for sticking with us to make sure we had a ride and some help. We must also thank Rich, our Auctioneer, who handled all our cel phone calls and didn't turn his cel phone off.

If we forgot someone, it is not intentional.

ThankYou All.

WE SURE LEARNED THAT WE HAVE A FABOULUS CIRCLE OF FRIENDS,

Ron & Ruth