I woke up to my alarm screeching in my ear, and groggily called home.  My little sister Julianne answered the phone, and I asked her to please find out what time Mom and Laura were arriving.  I heard her turn from the phone and say, "Mom, what time does the plane arrive?"  Mom then got on the phone and explained that she had decided last-minute that she couldn't come, because she needed to be responsible and stay home with the girls.  She said to call Laura to find out the arrival time.  So I called Laura, and asked her the time, and she asked an airline worker, and turned back to me and said "The plane gets in at 10:20 in Burbank".  

"Burbank?!?!?  Are you SURE?!?!"  She was sure.  Burbank was a two hour drive.  The correct airport was a ten minute drive.  So I jumped out of bed and hurriedly began packing up my side of the apartment.  I got my side packed up and scrubbed and vacuumed in an hour and a half, and went to load everything in the pickup; the pickup wouldn't start.  

I looked up random mechanics online, and finally found one that worked on diesels and was near my location, and started to call around to find a tow service, when my friend Denise called a mechanic friend of hers who said he thought it was the alternator.  So we jump-started it from her car, and then we drove to the fairgrounds to load the rest of the stuff I was taking home.  (Which made the truck look like a moving service.  Completely ghetto.)  Everything went smoothly at the fairgrounds, and I finally headed north to pick up Laura, who was still waiting at the airport.  She arrived at 10:20AM, and I picked her up at 3:45PM.  Poor girl.  

It was too late in the day to head across L.A. to the friend where we had planned to stay the night, so we drove to the coast and went to Santa Monica pier for a few hours and waited till the end of traffic hours.  That night we drove to our friend Rachelle's and spent the night, and in the morning, the truck again would not start.  So Rachelle helped us jump-start it, and we drove to an auto-parts store, where the man tested the batteries for us and said they were both working fine.  (The truck has two batteries since it is diesel).  So we decided to head an hour over to my cousin Kevin's who said he would help us change out the alternator.  

We drove about half-way there, when the alternator indicator on the truck started dropping lower and lower.  I told Laura we had better get off the freeway when it got to the red, so then began the race against time, to get as close to Kevin's as we could before the truck actually died.  Eventually, it dropped into the red, and so we pulled off the freeway into a gas station, and backed the truck into a stall and dropped the tailgate and sat and had a picnic with music from my iPod speakers and took lots of lame pictures of ourselves.  We felt rather narcissistic, but we really didn't have too many options for entertaining ourselves.  

Kevin was great; he drove 15 minutes the other direction from us to pick up the alternator that we needed and then drove the half hour down to meet us.  When he got there we jump-started the truck (again) and drove into town to another auto parts store, and parked out front.  We had the guy there test the batteries and alternator as well, and he said one of the batteries was bad, and the alternator was ok, but the belt (which I had just replaced two weeks before!!!) was bad as well.  So Kevin changed the wire terminal on the good battery, the other bad battery, and the alternator belt.  

Just as we were finishing changing all of that out, Kevin and I were trying to figure out how to tighten the alternator belt, because we couldn't really find anything to leverage the pry bar against.  Just then, a man and his wife walked across the parking lot and stopped where we were, and the man asked, "Is this Operation Water Pump"?  And I said, "No, Operation Tighten Alternator Belt", and he said ok and grabbed the crow bar out of my hand and stuck it into a hole that we hadn't seen and wrenched it really tight while Kevin tightened the bolt, and then said, "Have a nice day!"  and walked off.  God sent him right when we needed him!  

Laura and I drove back to Kevin's with him and went out to dinner with him and his family, and then we left and drove to our cousins up in Visalia, which is half-way home, and got there around midnight.  We got up the next morning at 7 to eat breakfast with them and chat for a bit before they had to head to work, and then we laid down for a quick nap before leaving for home.  We woke up at noon.  Oops.  

We had been planning to meet our Aunt and Uncle for a quick visit before leaving town, so Laura called them and we agreed to meet for lunch, however, when we went out to leave, you guessed it.  The truck wouldn't start.  It has an attached wall plug-in battery charger, so we plugged it in and called my Aunt and Uncle back and told them that we weren't going to be able to come right away, and they said that they would stop in town and get some lunch and bring it over and we could have lunch while it charged.  So they got Quizno's and we had a lovely lunch and then went out to start it, and it still wouldn't start.  I had my uncle pull his mini-van around so we could jump-start it, but when he popped the hood, his battery was covered by the fuse box so we couldn't reach the posts to attach the jumper cables.  My uncle went and looked at my truck and jiggled a few of the wires, hoping to find something, and then he said just to try it again... and it started!!!   We quickly said good-byes and jumped in and left.  

We had to fuel a couple times, but apparently, diesel vehicles can be fueled without shutting off the engine, so we drove home without shutting the engine off, and made it back ok.  

It was a road trip never to be forgotten.

Moral of the story: Make sure you put the tailgate up!!!