Ahhhh . . . Summer

We usually bolt out of Toledo within days of the end of school, heading for the Sierra and a summer of hiking and backpacking. But, this year we had to move Sally out of her classroom and take care of a zillion chores around the place. A couple little chores became big chores and delayed us further. One of those entailed Sally getting a job offer as a volunteer in the  "teacher to ranger" program with the National Park Service in Yosemite. This required her to retire from teaching and pack for four months in Yosemite.  The other delay was the van. In a flurry of over zealous preventative maintenance I decided to replace the master brake cylinder. The brakes had been less than perfect for years. Squishy pedal. Little action on the rear drums. Inability to lock up any of the wheels on dry pavement. So I bought new pads for the front discs, new shoes for the rear drums and a master cylinder to rule them all. Installed the shoes and pads, then bench bled the master cylinder and installed it. Right from the get go the master sounded really not right, creating a squeaking/squishing sound each time the brake pedal was depressed. The brakes worked, sort of. I tolerated it for a week tinkering with the system trying to correct whatever it was that I did wrong. I took it to Les Schwab and had them try to fix it. $54 later we decided the new master cylinder was bonkers. I placed a call to O'Reilleys and they agreed to honor their warranty and replace the replacement. Although Sally and I had hoped to leave for Yo in June, it was July 1 by the time I got the new master installed and working-perfectly. So at 7:30PM on Sunday July 1 we finally rolled out of Toledo. We made Canyonville in southern Oregon by the time neither of us could keep our eyes open any longer, so we pulled into the new rest area, popped the top up and fell asleep on the "loft" of the VW. Chuck