The Beauty of a Working Dryer

I have been having a dryer dilemma for the past while. It was taking about 3 dryer cycles to get my clothes dry, but this has been going on for probably the past 1 1/2 years and it seemed to keep taking longer and longer. Well you kind of get immune to it after that long of time and stop thinking too much about it ... except for the fact the laundry is never done. If one of the kids wet their bed I wanted to CRY because I knew washing and drying those sheets would be an all day event and it would wipe out any other laundry I should be doing that day. About 2 months ago, all hot air stopped working on the dryer so we (Jonathan in VA, and myself in TN) respectively, started looking at new dryers and both got the same response from appliance salespeople, that the older dryers are better than the newer ones. So I took it upon myself to diagnose the dryer as having a bad heating element. I read up on repairing this problem and decided it was certainly something I could do myself. I had the dryer apart and was feeling pretty good until I had to start disconnecting various wires. The first two didn't seem too bad and I felt rather triumphant but then it looked like there were going to be about 12 in all and they were far back in the unit and I just envisioned the dryer exploding when put back together, so I quit and called the repairman. He came, said it was not the heating element but some fuse thing, fixed it, and said it was good to go. Well, it did get hot but still took 2 cycles+ to dry. This was getting ridiculous so I called the repairman back and said, you guys did NOT in fact fix my dryer and you need to come back. They advised me first to make sure it was not the dryer vent that needed cleaning and so I disconnected the dryer from the vent and sure enough, when running, it seemed to get much hotter than when connected. So I started trying to figure out the maze of my dryer vent since it does not come out the same wall where it originates. After about 3 days of pondering that issue, I called the dryer vent guy and he came over. Three hours later, he told me our vent was now the cleanest one around. Our vent actually goes under our house right above the foundation and around some twisty curves. The final prognosis is that our dryer now dries -- it really dries! One cycle and the clothes are dry -- it is amazing! I am truly giddy about this. I am caught up on my laundy and I just stare at empty clothes hampers in dismay ... how can this be I wonder ... the clothes all washed, dried and put away ... ahhh, this is true bliss!