Nothing's ever easy

A couple of days ago we found the name of a place that might have the part needed to repair Vincent. We had the address which turned out to be useless due to the lack of street signs. We stopped to ask a guy if he knew where it was and he pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately, there was no sign of a shop anywhere near the place. We stopped to ask another guy and he'd never heard of it, but he knew of another place that might be able to help. He even phoned them (still in business!) and gave us directions to the shop. The guy at the shop spoke pretty good English and said that he could order the part from Mexicali; it should be here by Friday morning and it would only cost about $50.00.

Sounds too good to be true eh? Well, a part did arrive on Friday, but the price had almost tripled and it was the wrong part. Dan took it anyway thinking he might be able to rig it somehow. And he might be able to if he could find a bolt the right size. An M8, 125 pitch, hex-head. The repair web site that Dan consulted said that it should be available at any Home Depot or large hardware store. That's great, but we're in Mexico - not a Home Depot in sight. Melody & Carl left for Phoenix for a book sale on Friday and they looked, but weren't able to locate said bolt there either. Dan phoned every VW dealer in Phoenix, but wasn't able to find the right part.

We wandered around on foot today and found a little store that had a bolt with the right thread, but it's too short. We took it anyway on the theory that not-quite-right is better than nothing at all. We'll see how that goes.

While Dan is working on Vincent and there's nothing that I can help with, I'm hanging out in "Siestaland" (The back-yard). I know, it doesn't seem fair, but he says he'll get me to put on the new belt while he's working on the pulley thingy later. Yeah, that should be fun.

While we were wandering today, we had a funny thing happen. We had the dogs with us and we were walking along a dusty residential side street. A woman came running out of her house shouting for us to stop (in Spanish, of course). She had a photo album with her and she showed us a picture of herself with a dog that she used to have. A golden retriever that died of brain cancer about 5 years ago. We chatted for about 10 minutes while she hugged and petted Taz. She was thrilled to see a dog just like her much-loved "Gizmo" and we were thrilled to be able to practice our Spanish with her.