Day 25-26: Slow goings in New Mexico

About 30 min outside of Albuquerque, the power went out and the bus came to a halt.  We regretted not getting it checked out when the alternator light went on 300 miles earlier. We chattered away in the cold (of course this had to happen at 11 pm on the coldest night yet in NM) for 3 hours until we got towed back into the city. I had contacted a VW repair place that said they would be in at 9 AM on Saturday, so we urban camped in a super shady area outside their shop and were stressing out when they did not come in at 9… Thankfully they called us at 10:30 right when we were deciding that we could not fix it ourselves after a last ditch effort pouring over the VW bible and poking at things near the engine.

Super lucky- turns out Albuquerque has a thriving VW air cooled engine scene, and we were able to get a new alternator, and have it installed in a few hours for $300 including the tow.  While it was being fixed, we walked around the thriving metropolis of downtown Albuquerque, and tried to forget the fact that we had not brushed our teeth or bathed in a while. 

We hopped in the bus and hurried outta that place as fast as we could in an effort to make up time. We stopped in a little town called Santa Rosa for some breakfast food at dinner time, and made the decision to press forward to Amarillo 4 hours away before we would rest our heads in a real hotel and try to put the breakdown behind us.  We drove like zombies (lack of sleep and little hygine) to Amarillo and started to unpack our stuff when Jon turned completely stiff and starting repeating the words “oh no”. It took a while for him to articulate that he had left his new macbook pro lap top at the Denny’s in Santa Rosa.

We laughed and cried a little and were super relieved when we called the Denny’s that it was there and safe.  We got a goods night’s rest and headed 4 hours back to our favorite little city to retrieve it, then back to Amarillo. I have to say that finally being in Texas feels good. We stopped at a steakhouse to commemorate the start of our Texas adventure. Check out the sink in the bathroom. We LOVE TEXAS. It sorta feels like coming home.

 We pushed through and made it to Fort Worth at 3 AM. We are staying with a wonderful family from Jon’s mission who have a super comfy bed, a spare room and are fun to talk to and hang out with. We LOVE the BURTONS!

Stats: 

1270 Miles

Approx 26 hours in the bus

3 days and 2 nights

1 breakdown

420 "bonus miles" between E and F