At least school is going well...

Poor Travis. Not a single vehicle is in proper working shape right now, and to top it off Travis' knee isn't even in working order AND Mr. Super-Human-Immune-System actually got the flu this week!

Our car is a bit of a never-ending story right now.

The Explorer's stock 4x4 hubs have gone bad (apparently a common thing) so it'll randomly have issues with slipping in and out of 4x4 but never really engaging and it produces a noise kind of like a card stuck in the spokes of a kids bike.
In trying to find this problem Travis realized the front left u joint and ball joints needed to be replaced, and the 2 u joints on the front right did too - he thought hopefully that would solve it, but no, it was the hubs. Come to find out bad u joints can cause the 4x4 hubs to go faulty. sigh.
These pics were actually back from the day of Avery's surgery and are from when he was doing the left side. The first one really only shows tire off and tools laying around, the second pic I found and it shows some u joints - so for the majority of us that don't understand what I've regurgitated from Travis - you can hopefully see what I'm talking about, and the third one shows him actually working on the u joint.
When the left side was done he took it in for an alignment. No go. The ball joints he was sold were faulty. Unfortunately, it's the ball joints that are the hard job, not the u joints. So he had to take apart the whole thing and redo it the following week when he did the right side u joints. At least it was much quicker the second time for not having to go thru all the rusty bolts again etc. They all really needed to be done too. On the left side one of the directions on the u joint was really sticky and on the right side one of the u joints had a direction that was completely locked! Anyway, yea, done. Now we have to figure out what route we're going to go with the hubs.

Last vehicle: Travis motorcycle. When he went out to go to school earlier this week there was a little pool of oil under the front tire. Blew a fork oil seal. Now he's going to rebuild the the forks. At least with his bike we can say it's run perfectly for the near 11,000 miles he's had it for and riding it has done nothing but save us money. When he takes the bike everyday to school instead of the car, it's about a third the gas cost.

On the upside, at least these fixes are in agreeable weather. Last time he did a fix was on the car and he was out in 3 degree weather for 3 hours. And for now he's not dripping sweat working in the humidity in the full summer here...

As to Travis' knee, he hurt it playing Airsoft with cousins on New Year's Day. Yes, that long ago. We pretty well know the basic problem (you never know the extent of the circumstance until you get in and take a look, but I know it's his meniscus), but finally over the May break he's had the doctors appointments needed to move on with the dumb thing. X-rays and an MRI have been taken and he finally has an appt. with an orthopedic surgeon next Monday. Unfortunately, waiting this long, who knows what/how many chunks have been floating around in there chewing up the joint and now he's got a rather sharp pain where something has probably currently lodged to poke at him. If you get the right kind of chunk in the right place, it can make your knee start locking too... Can you tell I'm happy about this typical man procrastination thing... I told him tonight I'm disappointed in his knee for not offering up the sharp pain much earlier so he would have prioritized it a little higher...

Still, in the end, not much (outside of school) is working very well for Travis right now and I can certainly have sympathy for that.