In this vlog, Victor (Speaker A) and his partner Rebecca document a family RV road trip toward San Francisco, aiming to arrive in time for their son Gideon's birthday. After a routine car wash, a brake warning light appears, indicating loss of brake pressure. They pull over on Highway 37 and discover a shredded alternator belt and a missing second belt, leaving the vehicle unable to brake properly. With no immediate professional help, they call a mechanic back home for phone guidance and enlist a friend (referred to as "the beautiful one") who drives 70 miles to fetch a replacement belt. They attempt a DIY repair, installing both the old and new belts, tightening them as best they can, and eventually get the vehicle moving again. The vlog captures the stress, improvisation, and teamwork involved, ending with relief that they reached an RV park, pride in handling a repair they had never done before, and anticipation for Gideon's birthday celebrations the next day.
Chapters
Half an hour, 45 minutes from our destination in San Francisco, sort of in the middle of nowhere. But what's wrong? This is what's wrong. Big travel day today. Gonna try to make it to San Francisco, over 300 miles. See, tomorrow's Gideon's birthday. We want to be somewhere fun for that. We're really looking forward to it. Let's go. We've been making good time. Correction though, didn't have quite 300 miles to go. Close though, 270. Made it 100 miles. Gonna show Maple some love. Car wash, truck wash. You think she needs it, Beck?
Yes.
Let's just show you how nasty Maple has gotten. Do you see?
Oh yeah, we've lost our— we lost our, our thing there. That's what— that's what's flapping.
We got a flap loose, guys.
Remember, it was—
we had it It was, uh, broke off there. Our bungee cord has worn off, but that held strong. That was from Dennis way back in Florida. Oh my gosh, look!
What do we say? Washroom.
Can y'all see that?
It's so bad you can't even wipe down to the— look at how much, look at how much you have to—
No, definitely not too wide. It's a storm out there, guys. A Sophie's messy storm. Are they spraying us down? Oh yeah, they're doing a good job.
Oh wow, it looks so much better. I can see, I can see.
Oh, the car looks good too. I know, I'm like Well, a little came in, I see. Yeah, did we water our basil plant a little bit? It was—
oh my, what happened? It was pouring over the door.
Oh my gosh, look, look in the floor. Yeah, not completely watertight from the sideways, uh, water. Look though, our basil plant doing great, almost to seed. There's these little tiny seeds in there that are still soft, they haven't hardened up yet. Oh my. It's a brand new bus. Okay, it looks great.
I hope water isn't all in.
Wow, wow, they do a really good job. Yeah, our tire's washed.
We had a little bit of damage right here. Oh boy, but it might have already been there.
Yeah, there are no flies on here anymore.
All right, let's go, guys.
We're ready to go. 161 more miles. Here we go. Hopefully we'll be there by 5-ish. Well, everything was going good, then my brake light came on. It's not on right now, and that means we're losing brake pressure. And sure enough, I looked at the gauge, we were. I pulled over right here. Luckily there was like a dead-end road right there. We're parked there, but this is a pretty busy street, y'all. Highway 37, half an hour, 45 minutes from our destination in San Francisco, sort of in the middle of nowhere. But what's wrong? This is what's wrong. We came back here and we had a shredded belt. There was a belt kind of hanging right here. We called my mechanic at home. We're actually missing two belts right here. It's the alternator, and this is— I don't know. I shouldn't act— I shouldn't act like I know what any of this is. Well, it's been a heck of a time to try to find these parts. This part, we're gonna try to fix it ourselves because guess what, guys? It's Saturday. Yeah, it's Saturday at 7. This happened at 5, at 5 on Saturday. Called a million and a half mobile trucking services, couldn't find one to help us. Got actually no live people, had to leave messages. Nobody's called us back. The beautiful one drove 70 miles, has drove 70 miles to go get that thing before like the O'Reilly's shuts down. So she's gonna get back here and we're gonna give it a try. If that doesn't work, we're gonna have to get it towed somewhere. I don't know where, but we got to get off the street. All right, Rebecca's back. It's 8:06. I've got this in position to be put on. They don't have two. We need two. So we're gonna put the old one on and the brand new one and cross our fingers. We've got a new one ordered to a store, can't get it here till tomorrow. Oh boy, I hope this works because it's an hour and a half. We called AAA. It's an hour and a half wait on a tow truck. Interesting enough, for what it's worth, we've been here like 3 hours. Not one person has stopped to see if they could help. Where's Minnesota nice when you need it? Okay, I got the— I got the new one on. Let's get the old one on. The old one was too easy to get on. It's too loose. Now let's leverage this back up to make it tight. Pretty tight. The new one's real tight. That one's a little loose. I'm afraid it's just gonna wobble right off. Wait for it, wait for it. It's going good right now. Yeah, the old one just flew right off.
Okay, is that the old one?
That was the old one.
Is it hitting this one?
Let's— okay, that's pretty tight. It's not, it's not. Maybe with you I can make it a little tighter. And since we're gonna probably have— we're gonna have to go on one, we'll get to our destination on one and then go get the new one tomorrow. Uh, well, we're gonna have to— he thought try to put the old one and the new one on. Okay, we put them both back on there. Let me see this. We got the club from the van for jacking up the tire, got a little more leverage. We got it all the way as tight as we can possibly go.
Really tight.
Let's see if it hangs on there now. That old one's still wobbly. Let's go see if air pressure is building. Oh, the brake light came off. Okay. Let's get the kids in the car. Okay, just in case something happens, we're gonna go in the car and I'll follow you guys. Okay, 26 minutes to the RV park. We're gonna go for it. Well, we made it to 30 minutes. So proud of ourselves. Got that fixed, got here, gonna check in. Okay, let me wrap up this vlog here so we can edit. We made it just fine. I was pretty happy about ourselves because I've never changed a belt before in any kind of car. And with the help of the mechanic back home, thankfully he's available via phone, he coached us through it. Um, Beauty was able to get one belt, we put it on with the old one, it worked. We made it here. I was so proud of ourselves because that's so far out of our league. And we got our— I mean, if we would have gotten out— thank goodness we didn't get a hold of a mobile trucking service. That would have been at least $300, probably more. Thankfully that worked, or we would have to get a towing service. And where are we going to tow it to? Gonna tow it to a Walmart parking lot, I guess. So here we are. I guess we forgot to turn off the CBs. Turn off the mic. There we go. All right, time to go. That was fun. Tomorrow's Gideon's birthday. Beautiful one, bless her heart, wants it to be a great birthday despite the trouble. We were gonna do some shopping today for his birthday. The kids are gonna get him some presents, that type of thing. So she had to go get some decorations, get some presents on behalf of the kids. Bless her heart. And boy, she's getting real good with that iPhone, finding all these places, calling all the different places for the belt, calling all the different places for the mobile trucking service. Really proud of her, she did a good job. This is definitely the hard part of the trip when something goes wrong with Maple, especially along Highway 37, busy California highway, and it's your brakes. That could be pretty scary and nerve-wracking. Tomorrow's another day. It's gonna be great. Gideon's birthday in San Francisco, gonna be a lot of fun.
