The Apparently Never Ending Truck Adventures

I don't think I have mentioned a thing about my truck adventures so far, but they are apparently not over.

On my last trip with the F150 and the camper into the States (just before going to South Africa) I had quite a few truck problems resulting in several trips to various garages and some significant amount of time and money (and head ache) put into it. I decided that it was really getting to the point where I didn't trust the F150 anymore and I needed to buy another truck.

I bought another truck. Now I realize that it sounds easy enough and it fits nicely into a 4 word sentence but it was a whole world of nightmares as I bought something second hand.

I put the camper on it - Right there another simple enough statement but it wasn't without some difficulties as the truck is a totally different model and the jacks were too short to put the camper into the box in one go.

The old F150 was in good enough shape when it didn't have to carry the camper, or so I thought, and I decided to keep it and use it to bop around. I had new spark plugs and U-joints put in and was ready to drive North when the transmission, the transmission transfer case etc just blew up. I sold the truck and flew North instead. It turns out that the yoke was bent and when the U-joints were changed and everything had to go back straight in the way it should be it just blew apart.... while I was at 120km/hr on the trans-Canada highway.... but honestly considering the damage it was amazingly undramatic. The only thing was that I was hurrying to get to M's ballet lesson, but in the end I didn't miss it.

By then I had gotten used to the idea of having an old beater to mess around and, possibly unwisely, I bought a very cheap old truck from somebody I know in Calgary. It's a 1991 Chev Cheyenne 2500, used to be white but all the paint is pretty much gone and it is now grey , color of the metal under the primer.
I knew there was some issues with it: it has no spare tire and no tail pipe, issues easily fixed, it seems to be stuck in 4X4 all the time, and the clutch was pretty stiff and on its way out. I had hope that I could drive it until summer with a stiff clutch, BUT..... I drove 400 kilometers (250 miles) and.......

But I was lucky, on my drive North there are several stretches with no garages:
170km/100 miles from Westlock to Slave Lake,
500km/300 miles from Slave Lake to High Level
570km/350 miles from High Level to Fort Smith
...and this happened in Westlock, just across the road from the Westlock Inn and I was able to turn into a parking lot. So there was some significant good luck factors in that otherwise bad luck event.

So I am at the Westlock Inn, hopefully just for a couple of nights.