Today was the last day Kyle would be joining me on the trip for, which is bittersweet. It’s been nice having Kyle on the trip for the last few weeks, but at the same time it’s also good to have some alone time.
We started the day by heading to Kyle’s uncles house (not the same uncle from Illinois, different uncle, Todd) who was going to take another look at our control arm issue and potentially do some repairs on it if needed. We arrived at 10am and pulled the car into the driveway, quickly getting it jacked up and pulling the front right tire off to take a look at the control arm. While we did this, Kyle was having fun with the gas powered bicycle that Todd had made and was ripping up and down the street over and over.
In the end, it was determined that the noise was actually being caused by two pieces of metal hitting against each other when going over bumps because the front suspension had lost some of its “oomph” and was sitting pretty low. Despite this, it’s not actually a concern mechanically and I could easily make it the rest of the trip without fixing it. He also took a look at the AC and determined that the compressor had gone and would need to be replaced. While not a hard thing to fix, it would be expensive if we wanted to get the parts today rather than having them shipped, and since I didn’t really have time to wait on shipping, we decided to leave it broken and I’d just deal with the heat.
After looking at the car we went to the park a few blocks away where we flew the drone again for fun while Kyle and I waited for our meetup time with some of his friends at the library for a Pokemon GO event. I got some drone photos of Todd’s house which he was very happy to have and found them very cool, so I’m glad I was able to bring some joy with the drone. It definitely is fun to see your house from above, and not just on blurry satellite imagery.
We said goodbye to Todd and his son and headed to the library for the Pokemon GO event, which was only 30 minutes or so. After the event, it was time to head to the real Springfield about an hour south where Kyle lives. It was an easy drive down, and after triple checking that Kyle had everything out of the car, we said our goodbyes and I started my trek back up north towards Guelph, Ontario, my next stop to visit some friends.
I made it a few hours north to a small town in Missouri where I got a hotel for the night to relax and recharge after a month of sleeping in the car and on couches. I watched some YouTube videos for a while, before finally heading to bed and getting a good nights rest.
