Running late, furnace problems, more snow

The meetings I was a part of yesterday kept me at work until just before 5 p.m. I took off as soon as I could get out of the room we were meeting in and called Mama to tell her I was heading her way. I knew if I hurried I might have ten minutes at home before we had to head right back to Decatur for church. On the way home, about twelve miles out of Bowie, something started happening to the truck.

At first I thought it was a transmission problem because there was a sudden loss of speed. However, when I pressed on the accelerator the transmission down shifted and I would get back up to speed but once I was back up to highway speed the truck would buck and lurch. I had to pull onto the shoulder and slow down to about fifty miles per hour to keep the truck from bucking. I realized it must be the fuel pump going out.

I got off onto a side road as soon as I could and slowed to right at forty five miles per hour, creeping the rest of the way home. But I did make it home. When I get a little money I will get the truck looked at to see if it is the fuel pump or something more serious. So much for the extra ten minutes I thought I would have at home. We did make it to church on time even after we made the stop at BBTI to get our normal Wednesday night passengers.

Earlier that day, before Brittany and Andrew left the farm, Mama called to tell me the furnace was making a horrible sound. She held the phone up to the furnace and I could hear that the problem was in the blower. I told her to call the repair company we used to replace the A- coil and see what they had to say.

When they got there they pulled the blower and motor. They told Mama they did not know whether to charge a pest control fee or a furnace call fee. They found a mouse in the fan blades of the blower. Once they got the dead mouse out and put everything back in place, it worked fine. Good thing it was an easy fix because last night was one of the coldest nights of the year. It was nine degrees Fahrenheit this morning with winds at twenty five miles per hour. Not the coldest night of the winter so far but the coldest night in 2014.

The brunt of this most recent storm was due to hit us at 5 a.m. this morning so my normal time to leave for work worked in my favor today. It was blowing light snow as I left the farm but there was no accumulation yet.  We are forecast to get between one and two inches of snow accumulation. As I got closer to Decatur I could tell that the snow was freezing on the road where the heat from the tires of the vehicles passing along the road had warmed the surface enough to melt the snow and enable it refreeze into a covering of ice.

It could be an interesting ride home.