Well, what a day that was...

Monday afternoon, I had called a Kal Tire franchise near Lindsey's place. They have a full service truck mechanical bay, and I had to find someone to do some work on Sherman that I wasn't prepared to do myself.

I don't mind doing the work, but I know my limits. And when I don't have the proper tools to do the job, it's better to pay the money and hand it off to someone who does.

Thing is, they wanted it there at 7:30am Tuesday morning!

I hadn't even fired up the engine yet.

Anyhow, we set the alarm for 6:30 am, and got things tidied up enough that I could drive him over there. Fortunately, it was only ten minutes away.

Here's a video of me firing Sherman up yesterday morning after he had been sitting for a year... turn up your volume!

The idea was to do a complete mechanical inspection as well as do some things that I knew needed to be done. But they would have to order some parts, and I figured they could do the inspection, order the parts, and then I could bring Sherman back on Thursday afternoon and leave him there to get the work done while we're down in southern Ontario.

So I left Sherman with the mechanic and they drove me back to Lindsey's.

One of the things I knew needed work was the drive shaft u-joints. They were starting to clunk pretty bad the last time we drove him a year ago, but I had never crawled underneath to have a look at them.

The mechanic called and suggested that we leave it there... the u-joints were in pretty bad shape! Certainly didn't need the driveshaft falling out!

So that changed our plans a little. We had been sleeping in Sherman because Lindsey's house is not very big. More convenient for us to go back up to Ruth's father's place so that's what we did yesterday evening.

But we also went to visit with my mother. We drove over there and she took us out for lunch. Went to a nearby Indian restaurant that we've been to before. Lots of food... we were stuffed! Then, we drove to downtown Ottawa and across the river to Gatineau, Quebec.

As part of the Canada 150 birthday celebrations this year, they had done up Jacques Cartier Park with a bunch of landscape sculptures. It was free to get in, but we couldn't find free parking nearby and paid the $10 CAD ($8 USD) to park.

Me and my mom!

Really well done. Amazing actually! And free! The exhibition has been open all summer and it closes on October 15th so we're glad we made it there.

Then we dropped off my mom at her place and drove back to Kal Tire to pick up some things from Sherman that we were going to need for our trip this weekend.

Sherman, up on the hoist!

He's going to be there at least until next Wednesday I think. The parts may not arrive until Friday, and then Monday is a holiday here in Canada. Oh well. They promised to look after him and he'll even be stored indoors at night. 

Then it was over to Lindsey's for supper. It was her and Justin's 8th wedding anniversary and we had bought a nice roast beef to have for dinner with them. 

After dinner, we had the hour drive up to Ruth's dad's which is where we will be until Friday morning when we head down past Toronto.

So... it was a busy day for us! Maybe tomorrow I'll talk a little about what all we're having done to Sherman.

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