Category: Mexico

Transmission Rebuild

We have had a constant problem with our truck, which I will detail in another post. The one thing that has never given us a hint of trouble is our transmission. It never shifted too smoothly from 3rd to 2nd when in Drive (shifts perfectly in Over Drive), but that has been the only thing I have ever noticed from it.

We had just left camp and were headed up to the border to do some shopping when I became quite sleepy. I asked my wife to drive and I would try to get a 15 minute nap. The truck was running rough, but was at least drivable.

She took over and I zonked out quickly. I had been asleep about 30 minutes when I sensed something was wrong. My wife puts off some serious tension in the air when she is stressed while driving. I almost always know when she feels pinned in between concrete barriers or other vehicles. She does not have to say anything, but I wake up.

This was one of those moments. She had been driving and slowed down for a rough spot in the road. As soon as she got through that area the truck lost forward propulsion. That was not strange since we have been having power issues with the engine. But this was different. The engine was running, but the transmission was not engaging.

She pulled us over to the side of the road as much as possible between two hills. A bit of testing showed me that it was definitely the transmission. Strange thing was that we still had reverse.

These things rarely happen where you have cell phone service.

Three hours later I was finally able to flag someone down and he helped us back up (without getting hit) to a spot where we could pull the truck totally off the road. He then took us to a gas station about 30 minutes away.

The gas station is strategically located at the crossroad of 2 major highways. Because of this, there is almost always a federal police officer waiting to catch speeders. While I am skeptical of the police in this particular area, I have never had a problem getting information out of them. They ended up calling a tow truck and getting a price quote for me.

From the time we broke down until we were settled into a hotel was about 7 hours. And our pockets were almost $200 lighter.

The tow truck driver picked the Suburban and me up the next morning and took us to a transmission shop he recommended. He did not charge me for this little jaunt across town. Very kind man.

From the time I arrived with the truck until they were delivering it back to me at the hotel was less than 4 hours!

I watched them tear the transmission apart to see what the problem was. The planetary gears were shattered. It was quite interesting to see the assembly with all the cracks and broken metal off of it. They replaced the broken parts and put new seals/gaskets in the tranny and had us back on the road. It cost less than $300 for the operation.

Fortunately for us that it died on the Mexican side of the border. While parts are more expensive there, labor is much less expensive. Had we had the same malady happen on the US side of the border, I have been told it would have cost us between $750 and $1200.

We made the rest of the trip into Texas without incident. Though we arrived a day later than expected, we finally made it.

Running report

I have not been able to get on line enough to update my running log. I think I ended up taking about a 12 day break with no running. However, I was able to run once in Tampico when I got to where we were getting ready for camp. I have run in Tampico before. I was able to find a nice route and ran about 3 miles. When I came home from my run my wife met me at the door and laughed at all the bugs that were stuck to my face.

I also ran at camp on Tuesday. I had two other fellows run with me. One used to be a runner, but has not run in a few years. The other was a soccer player, but was not used to endurance running. We ran about 4 miles. The former runner stayed with me and pushed the pace a bit. But his lack of fitness caught up to him in the end and he requested walk breaks. It was an out and back course, so we picked up the soccer player on our way back. I won the sprint at the end of the run.

What was fun about that run is that we were on a dirt road the whole time. But when we left the dorm room it was dark. Dark. There were street lights about 2 kilometers from where we started running. I knew the road was straight and the lights were on the right side of the road. We just ran straight towards the lights and tried to keep them a bit to our right. As far as I know, none of us stepped off the road. When we got to the section with the lights we were thankful for them. There were many potholes and mud puddles around the lights. I am sure they were all over the road, but we never fell in one.
It rained the rest of the week and therefore did not run since the only option was the muddy road.

Our first morning in Texas, I was able to go out for a run. I ran about 3 miles again. I got to run through an orange grove. That was fun. A bit of trail running. When I got to the back of the grove I turned the corner and was staring at the farmers house. I did not know there was a house back there. I ducked back down a row and made my way out of there. I am not sure what he would have thought if he saw me running through his yard at 7:00 on a Sunday morning.

Camp Week

We were in camp July 16 through 21. Here is a quick breakdown of each days highlights.

Monday
We started camp without too many problems. Most all of the campers arrived that afternoon/evening. Because the camp was near the big town of Tampico, many people came into the city and we provided rides for them out to the camp. This meant that everyone with vehicles piled in as many as they could. There were 50 of us in 5 vehicles. I had the largest with a Suburban and then we went down to 2 small Nissan pick-up trucks. But we made it.

The biggest excitement of the day was when the evening service was over and my wife went to get our daughter out of the children’s class, but she was not there. No one even knew she was gone until my wife started asking about where she was. Apparently she had slipped off about 10 minutes before the class was over. Panic ensued. There is a swimming pool and a lake with a sloped bank just outside of the children’s class and before you get to the dorms. My wife found our daughter in the dorm room by herself.

One of our speakers was not able to make it until Tuesday afternoon. His wife was to teach the “low verbal” class. This class is for those who do not know signs well. Some would be because of retardation while others just simply have not learned signs and therefore would not understand well in the main service.

Tuesday
That was the first full day of camp. I found out that the service I had scheduled myself to speak in which was to be 1 hour long was not long enough. We had a full song service with a choir special and a biblical drama. That cut my teaching time to about 25 minutes. I worked the rest of the week to shorten the pre-teaching activities but was never able to free up more than 35 minutes for myself. I had planned to teach for the vast majority of the hour.

We also got to go horse back riding that day. Like the swimming, I chose to sit that activity out. Not that I dislike horses or swimming, I just had so many other things to be working on as director.

Wednesday
This was the day I learned one of the privileges of being me. I had been waiting at the meal times until all the campers had gone through the food line before I went and stood in line. This was not out of kindness, but laziness. I would rather sit at the table and talk with my wife than stand in line. The cooks noticed this and started bringing me food while the ladies were still in line waiting for theirs.

Director’s position has privileges along with the responsibilities.

Thursday
By this time we had gotten used to our daughter slipping off to the dorm room. Only one person passed out due to heat exhaustion. I slept through lunch to be able to get a longer nap in that day since I knew that getting people to bed on the last night of camp would be more of a challenge.

During the evening service I was in another class teaching the “low verbals” and I missed the preaching of the main service. The preacher is a pastor from Colima (near Guadalajara). I do not know him well and was really looking forward to seeing him preach. By the time I got out of my class, they were already into the invitation for the main service. Apparently God used Alex and touched hearts in a great way. It was the largest response from the campers.

There were only slight problems getting everyone to bed. I finally went to sleep about 30 minutes after “lights out.” I didn’t think that was too bad.

Friday
We got an early breakfast and started cleaning the camp. Because of my years of experience as the final inspector on Saturday clean up crews at the other camp where I worked, I have learned to be heartless in getting people to clean. But trying to rally a bunch of Deaf to do a general task is not as easy as with the hearing. When everyone is ready to go, you have to get in people’s faces as individuals to tell them what work needs to be done.

I was satisfied after a while and then we had to call the camp manager over to do an inspection. While she worked with my wife to put the final polish on the dorms, I was finishing up the final details to get everyone on the road.

Final results
We had 93 campers. We are not sure if the number of salvations was 3 or 4. I should know when I get back in Mexican cell phone range and I can text message one of the pastors. No fist fights. As far as I know there were no “stupid Jr. problems.” That is what I call petty arguments that people get involved in when they act like 8-12 year olds.

It was a wonderful week from my perspective.

Tampico and/or Bust!

We made it to Tampico today. This is the jumping off spot for our camp starting next week. We have been driving 3 days to get here. Today the truck was worst of all. It seems to have known we needed to get here. God allowed the truck to get us to the house where we were staying. Even though the truck would start and run the last 3 days of traveling, since we parked here at the house, we have not been able to get it started and running with any reliability.

Tomorrow we will be tearing into a few things and seeing if we can pinpoint the problem. Today we found some things, but after we had dinner, it was hard to convince ourselves that we really needed to spend much time under the hood.

“No Sir, Mr. Police officer. That’s illegal!”

Yesterday morning as we were leaving Coatzacoalcos we were pulled over by the police. This is something that many people deal with here in México, but we really never experience it where we live.

This was a “routine” traffic check. They were checking papers to make sure that the drivers had licenses and car paperwork in order. I have no problem with that. When I was told to pull over, I did not immediately suspect anything fishy.

That all changed when the police officer came to my window and stuck his hand in to shake mine. That was odd behavior for a policeman. I then knew what was coming. He asked me if my paperwork was in order. I replied with a simple “Si, Señor.”

He said, “Then just buy me a Coke and you can be on your way.” Buying someone a Coke is a euphemism for paying them a bribe. México is known for its corruption in the police system. The government even runs TV commercials here telling people to not pay bribes. They call them “mordidas” which is “nibbles.” As in, small bites.

I simply told the officer, “No Sir. That is illegal.”

He thought for a second and said that if my papers were fine (he did not ask to see them) then I wouldn’t mind buying him a small snack. Again, I replied, “No Sir. That’s illegal.”

He was about to let me move on when his boss came up and asked if my papers were in order. I said they were and he asked to see them. I started showing them to him and he said, “Don’t worry about the papers. Just buy us a Coke and you can go on.”

For a third time I replied, “No Sir. That’s illegal!”

He looked in at my family and said we could go on. As we pulled away I heard the boss say, “They are religious people. They won’t give us anything.”

That, my friends, is a classic example of extortion. Forcing me to pull over so that they could ask me for a bribe. They obviously had no intention to look at papers. That was the pretext, but they were not doing it. They were using their authority to force people into giving them money. And many will do it.

I just acted as authoritative and refused to give them what they wanted. What are they going to do to me? México is a changing place. Gone (I hope) are the days that they will lock you in jail under false charges just to get a bribe out of you. There is too much public awareness of the problem today. Only those who are scared of their authority will bow to that.

I am not advocating breaking laws. I am just wanting them to live under the same laws everyone else must obey.

We never experience these kinds of actions in Yucatán.