Cape May, NJ Day 7

June 15, 2023 It’s a new day! Bob was up early making phone calls and did some searching online. He found a Freightliner dealer that was willing to come down from Atlantic City to look at the problem. Dale was the owner of the business, and after talking with Bob about the things Bob was told to try to remedy the problem, Dale just said he would drive down himself and figure it out. It was about a 45 minute drive from Atlantic City. He arrived, got under the back of the bus, and within a few minutes found out exactly what the problem was. The jacks had been overextended at some point, sometime, and the rear air inflation bags came out of their holders. Bob went under the bus and sure enough. The guy said he would order the new air bags and they would be delivered to his shop at 4 AM (that’s the usual delivery time to the shop) and he would come down as early as he could tomorrow morning to install them. It would be 3 bolts and done for each side. OMG! Yesterday, we were looking at having the bus towed on a low-riding flatbed trailer, the kind like they use to haul a big front-end loader, and take it up to Philadelphia for repair. The other option was having some guy about 18 miles from here TRY and tow it to a place that MIGHT be able to fix it, IF and WHEN he could get the parts. YIKES! Unfortunately, this whole debacle would definitely change our plans for Jersey City and seeing our friends. We don’t know when Dale will be done with the repair. The drive to Jersey City is 157 miles which is 3 1/2 hours for us and we have to make a fuel stop as well, so that adds on more time. Bottom line, we don’t want to make that drive to Jersey City at rush hour. My tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island is a no-go for tomorrow. We won’t get there in time. (I’ll have to get Bob to bring me back another time. I am trying to stay upbeat about it all, but it has been disappointing. ) We won’t be able to make a decision about what we are doing until tomorrow. Once we found out that the repair was going to be done tomorrow and we would be good-to-go after that, we both heaved a sigh of relief. It was like a weight was lifted off of our shoulders. Bob has been battling a bad cold for the last 3 days with draining sinuses causing a nasty cough. After lunch, Bob took a nap. He needed the rest. Later in the afternoon, I helped Bob put the mud guard back on, and reinstall the bike rack and the tow bars for pulling the Jeep. (Bob had taken them off when we thought the bus had to be towed from the rear.) Once we got everything installed again, we took a short drive to CVS to get him some medicine for relief of that cough. We had dinner and I gave Auggie his evening walk. Bob rested. Tomorrow would be tell the rest of the story.