We had a very nice Xmas dinner in the early afternoon with Chelsea and Travis. I did all the cooking - not (it was good). The next day we packed it up to troop over to Las Cruces for another Xmas with Heather's family. Chelsea came with us and had fun with her cousins. Another successful Christmas season!
We planned on leaving on the 29th, finally heading back east to the boat in Georgia. We woke up to a little bit of snow, but not enough to change our plans, and it was pretty on the mountains. First we were going to the El Paso airport to drop off Chelsea so she could fly back to Phoenix. After that we had some breakfast and headed out into the west Texas nothingness. To be fair, it looked like it had gotten some rain recently, because it was pretty green, for west Texas.
We continued to make our way back east, as we are now very experienced in doing, along the I10. We stayed the night in San Antonio, but the next morning Pancake Joes was closed, so we ended up fending for breakfast later at the Buc-ee's. We had dinner again at Parrains in Baton Rouge, then stayed just east of there. By New Years Eve we were in Tallahassee, having dinner at the 4 Rivers BBQ. We have a routine by now. After driving all day we are usually not feeling very adventurous.
On New Year's Day we rolled on towards Brunswick, but the damn pulley wheel squeak was back. So it turns out there's a second pulley wheel which is now bad, which we probably should have guessed, since it had the same life as its neighbor. Just as well that we took it in, because just now, after making a 2000 mile trip, the front wheel bearings are also in need of attention. It was up on the stand and the tech showed me they were clearly loose, but we also caught them just in time because they just had to be repacked with grease. We had the pulley replaced and the bearings repacked, and I swear I could feel the difference in how well the car coasted. I didn't go back through my records to see when they were last done, but it is apparently supposed to be done every 50k miles, which we've done in a little more than a year. Since the car was there overnight we rented a Sienna minivan to check it out. Heather hates the minivan-ness, which for her seems to be mostly associated with the sliding doors, but I liked the room. We'll keep the Land Cruiser until one of us drops, but if it drops first we want to have an idea of what we want.
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