We woke up in Tucumcari, NM at a little place called Motel Safari. I found it while doing hotel searches on Google. With overwhelmingly positive reviews, I had to give it a try. It's definitely is a throwback to the classic Route 66 days, with quaint little furniture and jukebox style alarm clack. Also, their claim to have the best beds in town is true true true! What a welcome for us weary travelers.
After cleaning up, blogging and grabbing a bite, we were back on the road. It was nice and warm in New Mexico. In the 90's, but dry. Oh, what a difference it made. This was our first full travel day without humidity.
It was just passed Albuquerque when Mike made a comment about My bad luck and waiting to see what would happen to us today. Ha. Ha. Well, fate didn't take kindly to that and my car started hesitating. Pretty soon we were inching along the highway and we decided to turn right back around to Albuquerque and find a service station. We pulled up to Sears Auto Center and spoke to a nice man there named David. David heard us out and went to talk to his techs in the back, only to find out that they don't work on Volvos. Luckily, David knew the right guys in town to help us out. He referred us to the great guys over at Anton's Auto Haus, Inc. We walked in and told Keith and Gene was was going on. They both listened intently.
Gene told us they were only opened for another hour. We asked him to please just take a look. He agreed to and went outside with Mike. They took a test drive, Gene asked Mike all sorts of questions and they drove it back into the garage. Without a word, Gene got the car on the lift and started working on it. It seemed to be a clogged up fuel filter and as soon as he got it disconnected it started to just gasoline. Oh, I was embarrassed and relieved all at once. Thank you, Gene! After putting a new one in, we were on our way again.
I wish I could say it was smooth sailing through the desert. I wish I could say Zelda (my car) behaved the rest of the way. Unfortunately, it was not to be. She started to hesitate again after leaving Albuquerque. The fact that we'd had her checked out made Mike feel a lot better about things, so he wasn't worried about the engine anymore. We focuses our attention on the fuel system. Maybe we got bad gas somewhere? We started to troubleshoot. We have Zelda an octane boost. Then, we gave her some new name brand gas. She behaved for a while, but not fully. We had to stop along the side of the road to let her rest. She behaved for a while after that. She got us to Flagstaff. That's where the gas was almost out and we put in some high octane Chevron gas. We won't know until we set out again if that helped at all. Maybe she needs a new fuel pump? Only time and miles will tell. For now, I hope she makes it one more day, just far enough to get me to my driveway in California.
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