Snow Falling on Motorcycles and Lost, Broken Down Trucks...

Imagine here a picture of my bike under four inches of snow.  I'd go outside and shoot that picture, but it is too cold and depressing.  Last night when I was taking Elizabeth home from our singles group fhe, where they kindly made paper flowers for our wedding, it began to snow.  A lot.  Riding a bike in the rain is bad, because raindrops hitting your eyeballs at 35mph feels a lot like hypodermic needles hitting your eyeballs at 35mph.  Snowflakes hitting your eyeballs at 35mph are just kind of like getting hit in the eyes with feathers, but really really cold ones.  And they have the added affect of terrifying you because you can't see through them and they are turning the ground into an uncertain neverland.  It's... no fun.  Well, not unless perhaps you are a hockey player, and the idea of being cold and injured is a particular treat.

I woke up this morning to take Elizabeth to work and found said four inches of snow covering the only means of transportation (aside from shoes) between us.  Experimentally I brushed it off, started it up, and rode around the block.  It was frightening.  I went around the corners at about two miles an hour with both feet down, (tippy toes down anyway, as my bike's seat is taller than my bum).  While the bike didn't slide sideways from underneath me on any of those four icy corners, there was absolutely no guarantee that they would not on any of the other twenty-five or so we'd traverse if I did take Elizabeth to work.

She took the Trax.  And I feel blue.

I feel blue for several reasons.  I usually make Elizabeth breakfast and drive her to work, but couldn't today.  I'm realizing I'm several days back on my meds.  I realized yesterday that there are only 19 days to our wedding (that's not a sad thing, but it blows my mind a little and makes me reflective).  It's snowing, and I don't have a foundation in the ground out in Magna.  And not least, my truck may be well and truly dead.  It is broken down on the side of the road, about seven blocks from my place.  It came to be there when Elizabeth and I were going to Laura and Tim's for dinner on Sunday night.  Tim had a crazy urge for German food.  Go figure.  But like all Tim food, it was excellently executed, and fantastically tasty.

The truck had overheated the last time we drove it, a week before, and had died up across the street from the Capitol building.  We'd let it cool down and it had limped home to my garage.  But it was 37 degrees out, and falling, when we left for Laura's place Sunday night, and the idea of getting on the bike was just too much.  So I filled the coolant reservoir in the truck and hoped it wouldn't all leak out before we could get to Laura's and back.  But at the corner of 2nd and I st. it seems to have died an ignominious death.  What can be done?

Laura came and picked us up as we walked down 7th East, and took us home after dinner.  She was very sweet.

And I bought a tow cable yesterday morning at Harbor Freigh, after dropping Elizabeth off at work.  But I was unable to lay hands on someone to do the towing.  And so it sits.  Unless of course it's been towed by the city.  If so, I have half a mind to let it go.  Except that it's likely worth a few hundred in scrap metal.

But any way you look at it.  The purchase of that truck was... optimistic.  I'm about $1500 into it, and have only driven it about as many miles.  The 17 year old kid who I bought it from was about 25 facts short of honest with me about it's condition, and most of the miles I have gotten out of it have been driving up to Cache Valley and all around town in pursuit of repairs for the truck itself.  The guy who stole it for a couple of weeks right after I bought it might have gotten more use out of it than I have.  Frankly, I've put too much into it.  And it's paid me back with little more than derision.  

I do not love this truck.

But I don't love the prospect of buying a new used car any better.  I thought to myself a little while ago that I didn't want to buy another car unless I was buying something exciting enough that I'd want to drive it.  That doesn't really mean a sports car.  I just wanted something that didn't give me that slight feeling of malaise every time I turned the key.  Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear called my last car, an '01 Hyundai Accent, a "misery box".  He has generally less realistic standards than I do, and I was grateful for the car, and especially for my parent's grace and forbearance in letting me have it although they actually owned it.  But there was something dreary in it.  Perhaps that thing was just me.  I don't know.  

And the field of used cars I've so far perused hasn't been that encouraging.  In fact the top contenders have consistently been more Hyundai Accents, or their big brother, the Elantra.  They're just too damn sensible a choice.  So it might be back to the misery box for me, where I'll try to make believe it is more like "cheap and cheerful" than trudging around in a tar pit.  Groan.

In the mean time though, I must occupy myself with another uneviable task.  Trying to rescue files off the hard drive on my desktop.  It's crashed and burned too.  Much like the truck.

Fricken Finally...

Sometime last week, (or late in the week before (things are a bit of a blur these days (my tummy hurts

because I ate sugary stuff for breakfast (man, that was a non-sequitur)))) I finished the rough-in piping for my plumbing.  With great trepidation I called the building department at the county and requested an inspection.  I saw online that I was on the schedule for inspections and was expecting a call from the inspector to tell me when to meet him at the lot.  On the appointed day the call kept failing to come.  I became agitated waiting for it.  It made me quite uncomfortable.

I continued to check the online schedule every half hour or so, and around two in the afternoon I saw that my building permit number had disappeared from the list.  I called a secretary in the building department and asked what was going on.  She asked for my permit number and did a search on it then said that my number was off the list because the inspector had been there and gone.  My piping had passed.

So, some days ago I went back and buried them, and laid the gravel over the portions of the lot that were undone.  Looking at the stuff that I was getting off the pile of gravel I had delivered earlier, in the summer, I almost think they delivered road fill rather than straight gravel.  It seemed to be between half and three fifths fines once I got down into the middle of it.  I was a little miffed by that.  I hope it will perform well the desired function: draining moisture away from the concrete.

In any case, I was overjoyed to cut the tops off the piping I used as the 10ft head for the pressure test.

Now all I have to do it level the gravel, for which I bought a laser level, which will I hope be more accurate than the measuring poles I made, between which I stretched a cord with a line level on it.  It just didn't seem to be getting the job done well.  I could see a visible slump in places.

Anyway, once the gravel is level I can lay the vapor barrier, finish the rebar, buy and place the rigid insulation, shore it up, then hire a crew to lay the foundation.

And can you believe it has only taken me two years of work to get to this point?

Oh well.  I've been distracted lately.

Hurricane Elizabeth...

Meet Elizabeth.  I thank God I did.

A Starter, a Cement Mixer, and a Pile of Pipes...

Much of the last three weeks have been spent in working on the rough-in piping for the plumbing of the house.  I'd never put piping together, with the exception of fixing a bit of copper piping with dad at the cabin at Bear Lake.  Is there irony in the fact that the cabin was built by a plumber, but has had plumbing problems as long as we've owned it?

Anyway, that was years ago, and I was working with ABS rather than copper.  Copper is absurdly expensive these days.  There was a huge landslide at the Bingham Copper Mine (which for many years was the largest in the world), just a couple miles from Magna.  It has largely shut production at the mine down, resulting in a spike in already crazy high commodity prices for copper.  It's meant that scrappers are after it with a vengeance.  It was already bad, but now it's worse.  My last year at East Hollywood, some meth heads had broken into the pump house and torn all the copper coils and piping out of the air conditioning.  They probably got about sixty dollars for it at the scrappers, (that's just a guess), but cost ten thousand dollars of damage.  It's been like that a lot in Salt Lake.

But that's beside the point.  I don't know that they've ever used copper for waste piping.  And this was the waste piping.  I spent $150 at Lowe's on pipe and fitting, and proceeded to waste about $30 worth of the material making mistakes as I figured out how to do it.  But I think I got it.

Then, Monday, a week ago, I went out to the truck to take all the finished clusters of fittings out to the lot, and when I turned the ignition it turned over once then nothing.  I'd turn it and wouldn't even hear the clicking you get when the battery is too low to crank.  All I'd hear was a kind of popping slap.  I had no idea what it was.  But I thought I'd better start with the battery.

The battery cable terminal ends were so corroded that I spent about an hour and a half trying to get them off of the battery terminals.  It was a mess.

I took it down to Autozone on the back of the bike, after exploring the costs of a replacement at several different locations.  It looked like it was going to be about a hundred dollars.

But when the kid at Autozone tested the battery he said it was low, but good.  It wasn't my problem.  He suggested I pull the starter and bring it in for testing.  I was feeling quite low.

And I sat around feeling sorry for myself for a while, then decided I had to move on.  So, despite the fact that it was 6:30 in the evening, I started strapping the sections of piping to the bike and took it out to Magna.  It was funny to me, because despite the fact that the load was secured, people were very afraid to follow me on the freeway.  They stayed way back, then would move into the other lane and speed past me as fast as they could.

I started digging the trenches for the rough-ins.  One of the things that I screwed up was that I put the fitting for the line in from all of the stuff in front of the toilets (which are the last thing in the line) under the fittings from the toilets in the stack.  The result was that I had to dig really deep all the way along the line to get it in.  It took a few days.

But I wasn't working on it constantly.  I worked also on putting together a cement mixer.  I don't know yet whether it will work.  I got the idea for it from a mixer I saw in an old issue of Mother Earth News.  It was made from black iron pipe and an old washing machine drum.  It rotated on a bushing set in the center post of the drum.  But I figured you could get the same effect on exterior rollers without the complication of building a center post.  At first my design had it on castors, but when I was buying them at Harbor Freight I saw the roller bearings.  They were less expensive and they simplified the design.

It was another couple of exciting rides on the freeway with all the stuff for the mixer.  I'd built about half the frame at home, so it was substantially sized when it went out to Magna.  Actually it went down to Sandy first, because I needed some angle irons to put inside the drum as fins to carry the concrete mix up as it rolled, so it would fall on itself and actually mix.  I found the metal shop where they were being sold on KSL.  They were a small fraction of what I'd have to pay at Lowe's, so it was worth the trip.  Unfortunately when I got to the place they were out of the shop for the day.  I was miffed about that, but I was only a few blocks from Mark LaRocco's office, so I went over there and went to lunch with him.  So it wasn't a wasted trip.

I also found the drum for sale on KSL.  It turned out it was being sold by a port-a-potty business that was just about a mile up the 21st south freeway from my lot.  The drums used to hold the detergent they use to flush out the port-a-potties.  The used drum cost only a tenth what I'd have to spend on a new one.  I still need to go back and get the angle irons, and cut the top out of the drum to put them in.  Then I think it will be ready to test.

Anyway, this last saturday I decided I'd try to pull the starter out of the truck and take it to be tested.  It was actually pretty simple job, but terribly difficult to do.  It involved removing only three bolts.  The problem was that I had to do it from underneath the truck, where if it isn't jacked up, there isn't really enough room to do much.  Laying on my back under there I couldn't pass my arms between my body and the bottom of the truck, so all I could do was wiggle my arms up above my head then maneuver my hands by angling my wrists.  And the ratchet handle was too long to move it much between the exhaust and the frame, which was the only place you could get to the bolts.  You could only get one click on the ratchet, while angling your wrists in a tremendously painful manner.  So it took a long time to get the two bolts out that held the starter motor in.

The third bolt was the one that held the power wire onto the terminal.  You could only access this one after pulling the starter out.  The problem with this is that the cable wasn't long enough to let the starter rest on the ground while you took the bolt out, so you had to hold the starter with one hand while you tried to work the bolt with the other.  Of course this was very difficult already because I had to do it with my wrists cramped at a ridiculous angle.  But what really made it problematic is that the starter weighs about thirty pounds.  That eventually made it more or less impossible for me.  I just couldn't hold it up with one hand in that awkward position and make any headway with the other hand on that stubborn bolt.  Eventually I was able to solve the problem by getting a wood block that was sitting around from another project and laying the point of the starter on it, and letting that take the weight.  In all it took about an hour and a half to pull the starter out.

When they tested it down at Autozone it failed.  So I bought a new one.  Well, a reconditioned one.  It cost $50.  Better than the $100 I'd have had to spend on a new battery.

It was similarly difficult to put the new starter in, and it took a similar amount of time to do so.  At the moment of truth, when I turned the ignition to test it I got nothing.  But I noticed that the dome light had turned on when I got into the truck, but had not when I got out.  I thought that perhaps the connections of the battery terminals and the cable terminal ends were failing to get a good connection.  So I tried working the connecting bolts tighter.  But they were too corroded.  I decided the only thing to do was to buy new ones and change them out.  I went and bought new ones, but it was dark by then and I was tired, so I left it for Monday morning.

A couple years before I had done the same job with Mike Forsberg on the Hyundai.  I'd been terrified to cut the cables.  Surely, I thought, this wasn't meant to be.  You couldn't hope to just cut the cables.  That wasn't how the manufacturer had made them.

I've become more confident.  I just cut them.

I affixed the new cable ends and put them on the battery, and when I turned the ignition...  Presto.  Started right up, and with less cranking that it ever had.  So that was good.

After that, I took the last long piece of pipe out to Magna on the bike and spent five hours digging out the last bit of the trenching.  I was quite sore last night when I got home.

Today I've got to go back to Sandy to the metal shop to get the angle irons.  Then I'll put them in the barrel, and dig out the trench for the water supply line.  I was forgetting about that one.  Sheesh.  It will be the same length as the one I spent five hours on last night.  I guess there's nothing for it, but I'm getting sick of coming home covered in mud made of sweat and the dust that flies when I dig.  I'd forgotten how long all this shovel work takes when you are doing it all by yourself.  Heavy machinery has to be one of the best creations man's come up with.  I guess you just have to find someone who knows what they're doing to operate it.

Failing the Footing and Working the Pipe...

A couple weeks ago at this time I was standing in a trench looking down at my failure.  The trench might as well have been my grave.  It was about as long.  Not quite as deep.

I don't usually work on Sunday, but I'd kind of mired my ox.  On the previous Friday I'd been digging away at the trenching for the footing of the shed.  I've wanted to get it at least up as soon as possible.

As time has gone on, and on, and on, and I continue to spend hours and hours trying to make the excavations what I need them to be, I realize more and more how badly the guy I hired to do the digging screwed up.  I talked to the guy across the street, who does remodeling as a job, and he said that if he were doing it he'd have been able to do it right in about four hours, rather than the six and a half that I paid the other guy for.  Then again, he lives in a motorhome behind his son-in-law's house, and he he was wearing a home made t-shirt with a picture of him at Burning Man in the 90's.

But of all the things that the guy I hired screwed up, he screwed up the shed footing worst.  I dug furiously for nine hours straight on that Friday, and thought I had it just about there.  Mark LaRocco was coming to help on Saturday morning, so I rented a cement mixer at Home Depot on the way out.  I wanted two people so that the pour would go quickly enough that the concrete wouldn't start to set up before it was done.

But there was this root from that damn tree I mostly cut down.  On Friday I'd hacked at it with a mattock for an hour and hadn't made a dent.  The result was that we had to cut a few inches off the end of the trench to go around it.  And it just went on and on, and it was lunch time before we were even ready to dump the gravel in the bottom.  Then after we did, we went to get lunch and the concrete mix.  But when we got there, the yard where I was going to buy it was closed.  Everyone had just decided it was too pretty a summer day, and they'd decided to knock off early.

So we went to Lowe's and got bagged mix, which was more expensive, but we couldn't think what else to do.  We had to take it in two loads, because I'm relatively sure if I'd taken it in one it would have snapped the trucks rear end.

When we got it all unloaded and dumped the gravel, and leveled it, it was coming on evening, and Mark had to go.  His wife was nine months pregnant, and she was having a rough day of it.  He'd even put off their plans to go look at mini-vans to stay as long as he had.

But since I had the mixer I planned to stay and work into the night.  I didn't think I had any other option.  It had to be back at 9:30 Sunday morning.  Night fell, however, and it became obvious I couldn't work on.  I couldn't see what I was doing.  I decided I'd have to come back at dawn and do the pour, get the mixer back on time, and make it for at least the last half of church.

You'd think after working like a dog on Friday and Saturday, having had only four hours of sleep Friday night, that I'd go comatose on Saturday night, and have to rely on the alarm to get me out of bed in the morning.  I was too anxious though, and though I lay in bed I just tossed and turned, never quite asleep.  I didn't make it under until about 3:00am.  Then when the alarm rang at 5:30, I was already up.  I got a bowl of cereal and drove out to Magna.

Fatigue was making me really, woefully stupid.  I couldn't figure out what on earth I was doing half the time, but I knew I needed to keep right on doing it.  Because I only had about three hours until that damn mixer had to be back.

I'd forgotten my phone at home, so I didn't know what time it was, and was relying on the bells at the Catholic church down the street to tell the time.  They start ringing at I think 7:00am.  Maybe 6:00.  And, since I hadn't heard them I thought I was doing pretty well.

Then as I was maundering around the trench, dumbly trying to use gravel to form embankments into which I could pour the concrete, I heard the first bell.  It chimed nine times, then played some Catholic hymn.  Appearantly they didn't do the bells until 9:00 on Sunday morning, I guess to avoid confusing people waiting to hear the call to 9:00 mass.

I wasn't ready to pour, and my deadline was somewhere between 9:00 and 9:30.  I didn't know exactly what time I'd clocked renting it out Saturday morning.  And I was at least fifteen minutes from Home Depot, plus the time it would take to load up the mixer in the truck by myself.

I immediately accepted that I had blown it and had the mixer for another day.

I went on working.  And at about noon, Tony, the guy next door, who had been a county engineer for a while came out and pointed out that I was going to make a terrible mess of things just pouring into my shoddy gravel ditches.  I had been beginning to realize that myself through the haze of fatigue by about that time.

So I went to Lowe's for some lumber and a saw blade.  I'd only brought a cutoff wheel for the rebar.

When I got back with the wood I realized that I'd bought the wrong size wood.  But by that point I didn't care.  I began cutting and trying to nail the frames together, but I only had my 3lbs sledge with me, not my framing hammer, so it was a messy job.  And since the excavation there was no really flat solid soil anywhere, so when I'd hit a nail with the sledge, most of the energy went to driving the board into the dust, rather than the nail into the board.  It was very slow going, and my arm got very tired.  I cut myself pretty badly when the ground shifted under the board once, causing the hammer to glance off and me to snag a knuckle on the nail I'd been driving.  Another time it shifted and I hit my thumb pretty good.  Two weeks later the nail is purple in places, but it hasn't come off yet.

Anyway, as evening was coming on I was finally down in the trench, trying to nail the last bit of the ladder framing together, but it just wouldn't fit.  It was that damn tree root again.  The framing added three inches to the necessary length of the trench, and I didn't have it.  So the root was getting in the way again.

At first I was going to throw the sledge and scream every curse I could think of.  But then I decided I wanted to cry.  Then, Tony's wife came out and offered me some tomatoes from her garden, just on the other side of the fence from the shed trench.  She was very sweet and I thanked her.

Night fell.  I wasn't ready.  And this time I did go home and hibernate, until the alarm clock woke me at 5:30.  Out of bed, I went back out to the lot, and worked until 8:30, when I had to admit I still wasn't ready to pour, and that if I was, I was extremely unlikely to be able to do so before I had to have the mixer back.  I wasn't up for another day of it.  So I got to loading up.

I drove in to the Home Depot parking lot and got the rental desk guy to help me unload it, and he looked at it to make sure I'd washed it up before returning.  I told him not to bother, that I hadn't even had the chance to use it.  There was the second day to pay for, and a small fee for keeping it over the anticipated schedule, and as the coup de grace, when I ran my card to pay for it, it was declined.  I had over-run.  I had to go to the bank and transfer funds, then come back to pay.  The rental guy looked so apologetic when he said he hoped I had a better day.

After taking care of bond issue at the building department, I went home and spent the next week lying on the couch, trying desperately to ignore the previous one had ever happened.

Then last week, I decided to tackle the plumbing rough in.  It took the whole week, but I've finished putting the pipe and fittings all together.  And I only ruined about $30 worth of material.  Not that bad, considering I'd never really done any plumbing to speak of before.  Anyway, it was good experience.

I'm going to be taking it out to Magna and putting it all together tomorrow.  Hopefully it will all be water tight.  It's got to pass a pressure test eventually.

The Case of the $400 Tire...

I got the tire on.  I'm not sure yet if I've destroyed it in doing so.  I won't probably know until it comes apart at high speed, pitching me into a series of bloody gymnastics across the freeway.  But, you know, whatever.  Wait, what do I write to reassure my mother here?  Uhh...  I've got nothing.

I got the tire on finally, then had to take it off again, because my patch didn't hold on the old tube.  I replaced it with the new one I bought for it.  Actually, only one of the new ones I bought for it.  The first was the wrong size, and I can't return it.  Maybe I'll make a hat out of it.

My mistake was that I was failing to push the bead down into the well of the rim, giving it the extra room necessary to get the last bit over the lip of the rim.  Foolish of me.  It's kind of made not to make it over that bit of rim when the bead is set.

Anyway, you may be saying to yourself, "Why $400?  Are the fibers in the sidewalls of the tire made of gold thread?  Does the tire have nanorobots in it that assess the road surface in real time and change the shape and consistency of the rubber to maximize grip while minimizing rolling resistance?  Is it made from rubber recycled from the wheels on Elvis Presley's pink Cadillac convertible?"

Nope.

This is the rundown of the cost of the tire:

The Tire = $80
The Shipping = $10
The Air Compressor and Tire Slime = $20
The First (too small) Tube = $10
The Second (just right) Tube = $15
The 27mm Socket to Remove the Axle Nut = $5
The C Clamp for Breaking the Bead = $10
The Tire Irons = $10
The Fee for Retrieving My Truck After it was Towed Because I Needed to Put it Somewhere While I was Working on the Bike in the Garage and Foolishly Chose the Church Parking Lot Which I Didn't Know had Cars Towed on Saturday Night to Assure there is Room for Ward Members on Sunday Morning = $240

I know there were signs warning of towing, but I'd never actually seen anyone get towed.  There are cars in the lot every day of the week.  I think I'd parked there overnight before.  And I felt somewhat justified in parking there as it is my ward building.  Surely I'm a valid user.  So what if I parked there 12 hours early for my ward block.

When I walked over for church in the morning the truck was gone.  It was a familiar sinking feeling I've gotten pretty much every time I go to use it, ever since it got stolen out of my garage a few months ago.  But this time I was thinking maybe it would be better if it was stolen.  There weren't any tools or a stereo in it this time that could be taken and pawned.  And since the truck isn't worth much of anything in and of itself, the most likely scenario was that they'd use up the $60 of gas in the tank and ditch it, like last time.  I was pretty sure that the loss of  $60 was going to be less than the ransom if it had been towed.

I'd been booted once before, (ironically again at a church function) and so discovered the commonality between towing companies and Somali Pirates.  It's astounding to me that the state authorizes this kind of business.  In this example, the church has to pay a monthly retainer to a guy who operates out of a camper behind three gates in an industrial lot without a sign in Murray, who for that cash, occasionally comes and kidnaps people's cars and holds them for ransom.  And they get to charge absurd fees.  They're guaranteed by law.  I looked it up.  Astounding.  It's like the state and private entities co-opted The Shining Path, pays them a monthly wage, but get's nothing in return.  Except I guess their parking spaces back.

I wouldn't feel as bad if the church was getting the money for the towing itself.  That would probably seem pretty sketchy to me, but to have my tithing dollars going to giving me the opportunity to have my car legally stolen?  It seems somehow perverse.

Oh well.  What can you do?

The replacement for the front tire on my bike arrived by UPS today.  Time for round two.  Heaven help me.

Tears of Rage...

I'm calling this shot, "The Architecture of Despair".  I'm not kidding.  I'm feeling really horrible about this.  I have been trying for the last 16 hours to get this tire onto this rim.  Seriously.  16 hours.  And I'm really afraid that I'm ruining the tire, for all my efforts.

There are a couple things I think I might learn from this experience.  I mean, whenever I end up in a situation like this I try to comfort myself with the idea that it must be a life lesson.  And these are my ideas about this one.

First, I might not be a person who can do this tire on this rim.  If I believe this, then it would be a huge shift in the way I look at the world.  I've always felt that anyone can do anything.  I've thought that people are born with specific talents and capabilities, but that if someone put in the time and effort, that they can do what anyone else can do.  I mean, I think some things aren't worth the effort of becoming, and as a kind of verbal shorthand we can say that is something we can't do.

For example, it is extremely unlikely that I would ever run faster than Usain Bolt.  He's been born with talents and capabilities that I haven't.  Theoretically, in my mind, I could do it.  But since it is so ridiculously unlikely, I might as well just say I can't.  And I've chosen that limitation, so I have to be held responsible for it.  That's a huge thing to me.  We're always responsible for the limitations we choose.  I usually feel like it is a sin to choose a limitation, and that the chooser must be held responsible.  Fortunately, I'm quite happy to be held responsible for not working to become faster than Usain Bolt.  The only consequence I must suffer for choosing that limitation is that I run slower than some other guy that probably works really hard, but is also just naturally a lot better runner than I am.  I don't care about running anyway.  I don't feel compelled to run faster than anyone else, (or to run at all, if I'm honest), so it is a penance I can happily bear.

However, I've found this idea largely to be true in my life.  I mean, everything I've set out to do I've either come to the point of frustration where I realize that the thing isn't worth the effort it would take to do, or I've accomplished it.

But what if that isn't true?  What if there are things that some people can do that other people actually can't do?  At all.  Ever.  I find the idea really disturbing.  I know people are created differently, but want to believe they're basically equal.  If there are people who can't do some things that others can then they're not equal.  Maybe I'm overblowing the distinction.  But it bothers me.

I guess I should like it as much as I dislike it.  It would mean potentially that some of my attributes are uniquely valuable.  But I think I've liked the idea of being no one for the last ten years.  At least I've taken advantage of it.  If I'm no one, I don't need to feel guilty about failing to distinguish myself.  That was my primary motivation in life when I was in high school.  But when it became obvious afterward that I was very unlikely to distinguish myself in any way, it became comforting to think that I wasn't anyone, but no one else was either.

Anyway, the second point was a little more positive, and it was a correlative.  It's that maybe some things you can do for yourself are worth paying someone else to do.  I've also kind of come to the point of feeling like that is sinful too.  I tend to feel like if you can do for yourself, and you let someone else do it you are taking advantage of them.  Which is wrong.  And if you can do for yourself, but pay someone else to do it, you're lazy.  Which is wrong.

But I've wasted two days on this that I can't really afford to waste, and I might be ruining the tire.  Maybe it really is worth paying someone else to do it.  Even if I can do it for myself.

Probably it's all irrelevant.  I'd better get back to it.

Excavation...

This last Monday I finally got a guy out to dig the footings for the house.  It's been a rough go to get that started.  

I set and re-set batter boards for laying the foundation five times to get the dimensions just right, which took a great deal of time and was probably ill advised, but I can't argue because it was my own council I was keeping.  

I'd long considered renting a mini-excavator from Home Depot and doing the work myself, but then I saw and ad for a guy on KSL saying he'd work for $65 and hour.  I couldn't imagine it would take him more than two hours, as the excavations were really pretty minor.  $130 for two hours of a professional with a full sized backhoe compared to $440 (I think) for a day with a rented mini was too big a price disparity to ignore.

The only problem is that I desperately, desperately hate making phone calls to people I don't know.  I think I have abnormal speech patterns, or a strange voice, or maybe both, and I often find that strangers on the other side of a telephone don't understand what I'm saying.  I think I must rely a lot on non-verbal cues too to communicate, and they are obviously absent from phone calls.

Additionally, I desperately, desperately hate asking people for help, especially strangers.  I once spent an hour and a half in the New York Public Library just watching people to figure out how their circulation system worked, rather than getting the answer in a minute by asking one of the librarians.

But, given that renting equipment would involve a fair amount of dealing with strangers and filling out official forms (another particular emotional stressor of mine), and the price disparity, I finally called the guy with the ad up and arranged with him to come do it.  But he never showed up, and never called me back.  

After a week of trying to get a hold of him and failing, I girded up my loins, or in other words, gathered my manhood, and went to the Home Depot two Saturday mornings ago.  There I went through the emotionally taxing process previously described, and after 30 minutes or so in the rental office, I was pulling the truck around to hitch up the trailer with the tractor.  Then the guy stopped me and said he couldn't rent it to me because my hitch ball was bumper mounted, rather than frame mounted.  He asked if I could go borrow or rent a truck somewhere else.  I considered it then said no.  So I went back in and spent 15 minutes more undoing what I'd theretofore done.

Another week went by while I tried to think of people I'd feel comfortable asking to borrow a truck, but finally I decided to go back to the guy on KSL.  I called him and left another message, then  called him again and got him.  He said he was on another job that was going long, but he could schedule me for the next monday morning.  That was this last Monday morning.  This time he showed up.

I really thought he was going to make short work of it.  After all, he had a 20 inch bucket on his backhoe, and it was deep.  And the arm was much longer than on the tractor I tried to rent.  And he was a professional, with 26 years of experience.  It said right in his ad that he could "do rings around mini-excavators".  So I explained my staking to him and the width and depth of the excavations, and I sat back to watch the master at work.

A surprising amount of time went by while he bumbled through the first wall's excavation.  He was very painstaking as he dug beside the batter boards I'd so carefully laid out and staked.  None the less he bumbled his digging and pulled out two of four of the boards that delineated that wall.  And it took him two and a half hours to do it.

I realized at that point that I'd forgotten my checkbook, so I rode home to get it and eat my lunch.  By the time I got back he'd mostly completed cutting the trenches for the interior bearing walls.  He had, however, dug them crooked.

He then proceeded to the north wall, and by that time seemed to be embarrassed by how long it was taking.  He went a little faster, and dug out three of four batter boards on that side, and buried three or four of the steel stakes then compacted the earth over them with the wheels.  Then he ran over one of the smaller batter boards and splintered it.

When he was digging out the foundation for the shed he far overcut the stakes, then buried them too.  To fill those footings will take almost twice the volume of concrete than was called for.

Then he cut out the berms at the south and east ends of the yard that the county wanted me to get rid of for drainage.  This involved him getting confused and piling all the dirt up in the south east corner, until I reminded him the the north west corner was supposed to be the highest spot in the yard.  We were rolling up on six and a half hours at that point, and he was obsessively trying (but failing) to level the huge grassy pile of  what used to be the berms back into the west side of the yard.  He was just pushing and pulling the dirt back and forth, all the while with a huge grin of crazed concentration.  I pulled the plug.

$422.50 was the final bill.  It was a mess of a job, and I've spent two days out there so far, and will I suspect spend about a week more, just trying to fix his work with my little $6 shovel.

I took one lesson from it.  For almost the same price, if I could have worked out the truck thing, I could have done it myself and got the experience to boot.  And if I'd screwed it up, at least I wouldn't feel like I'd been cheated.

To be fair, the guy did try hard, and I very much doubt anyone had ever asked him to dig with the precision I was asking with my constraining batter boards.  Especially not on a crampingly small lot like mine.  It was a mistake to hire an elephant to do the job of, I don't know, maybe a badger.  He was just too big to do the job well.

None the less, this marks a pretty significant step on the way.  It's a step I was afraid to take, because it made it feel real and irrevocable.  So I guess it's really begun.

My Brakes Were Made of Apple Sauce...

It had been some time since I'd been to Cache Valley when I received a phone call from Ron College saying that a registration renewal card had come for my motorcycle.  So I decided to go up and get it.  This also provided an opportunity to avail myself of Mike Forsberg's experience in auto mechanics.  The truck has a few significant faults that have needed clearing up, and I don't feel so confident as to take care of them by myself.

Originally I was thinking that a good first point would be to fix the front driveshaft.  I think that the kid who owned it before me was probably out digging and got into something he couldn't get out of.  For anyone who has sadly forgotten their Cache Valley-ese, diggin' is going out in a wet field, putting the vehicle in four wheel drive, and driving around with the accelerator floored.  This produces a shower of mud and cuts trenches in the field.  Diggn' is to dumb teenage hicks with four wheel drive vehicles as the train is to the peacock; a way to display virility to susceptible females of the species.  In humans, this behavior is often of limited effectiveness, as it is not often possible to lure a female of the species out into a wet muddy field to watch the display.  In such a case, it usually serves as a means of convincing competing males of the subject's superior virility.  Because every male knows deep, deep down that one's virility is determined by the power output of his vehicle's engine and the rate at which it can consume fuel.

Also, diggin' is... really fun.

Anyway, given that my truck is an excellent machine for converting gasoline into noise instead of power, I suspect it wasn't too hard for the kid who owned it to get himself in over his head far out in a wet field.  The sensible thing to do at this point is use a winch if you've got it, or get a friend with a bigger truck, or better still, a tractor, to pull you out.  But remember the ostensible purpose of digging?  Such sense reduces the sperm count and sex organ size exponentially.  I think that he then probably just stood too hard on the gas and the rusty old drive shaft broke at the u-joint.

Originally I thought the broken bits were still connected to the u-joint, but upon closer inspection I found they were gone forever, dead and buried in some Clarckston farmer's field.  So there would be no driveshaft welding for me.  A new one is $250, and four wheel drive hasn't really proven necessary for me.  So the driveshaft is on hold.

Item two on the list was the titular apple sauce brakes.  All mush, with the brake pedal almost on the floor.

The first thing Mr Forsberg and I did after I bought the truck was to bleed the brakes.  They felt far better when we did, and I thought we'd cracked it.  But within two days they were mush again.  In the time between this weekend and then I've developed a very healthy following distance on the road.  In fact it saved me on the freeway a couple weeks ago.  I came upon a seven car pileup very rapidly, and was able to use my eight to ten car length following distance to slow way down and swerve onto an off ramp.  The guy too close behind me locked up his brakes trying to stop and fishtailed into the cement barrier at slow speed.

None the less, it was obvious from the beginning that the brakes as they were weren't going to cut it in the long run.

I thought that the problem must be the master cylinder.  There was a mess of fluids covering everything in the engine bay, and I though some of it could be brake fluid, leaked from bad seals on the master.  So I stopped at Autozone on the way to Cache Valley and got a new reconditioned unit.  When I arrived around two in the afternoon on Saturday, Mr. Forsberg pointed out that although I hadn't seen any leaking on the wheel cylinders on the front brakes, the rears were drums, and you wouldn't be able to see leaking brake fluid inside of them.  He thought we should check them first, and it is well we did.  They were a complete shambles.



These are a new pair of brake shoes.  They surround the hub in a drum brake, and when you step on the brake pedal, a little hydraulic actuator pushes them outward against the steel drum that caps the assembly.  It's kind of like bicycle brakes, except rather than squeezing in on the rim, it pushes out on the drum.  See that half an inch of grey stuff on the outside of the shoes?  That's what rubs on the drum and stops the vehicle.  FYI, they used to make that of asbestos, so if you're changing old drums, try not to breath.  Because those pads turn into a really fine dust when they burn down.

Anyway, here's a picture of the brake shoes we discovered when we removed the drums.

That shiny stuff you see is bare metal.  It's not that effective for stopping.  Also, the internals were indeed wet with leaked brake fluid.  The hydraulic cylinders were rusted messes, and the whole mechanism on the driver side had failed and started coming apart.  The shoe on the bottom in the picture below was from the driver side.  

See how it is worn into an abnormal shape?  That's because the cylinder and one of the springs had failed.  The result was that the shoe and eventually the drum had gone wonky and were slowly self-destructing.

And craphands but it was a mess to put them together.  We worked on it from 2:00 in the afternoon Saturday until about 10:30 at night.  The reason we stopped then was that we got a defective wheel cylinder.  The hole into which the brake line screwed was too large, so it wouldn't thread.  We worked on that for about an hour and a half alone before we gave up on it and tried to take it back.  Unfortunately Autozone was closed for the day.  We went the next morning.  It was our fifth trip during the project.

With the exception of a couple relatively sizable breaks, we worked on them from around noon Sunday until around 9:30 that night.

Mr Forsberg swore in no uncertain terms that he would never, ever, ever help me with a set of drum brakes again.  I'm not much more inclined to tinker with them.  They're an amazing pain.

My Butt Hurts...

Becca told me a story about when they were living in New Jersey and Inessa and Sophronia were still young.  They were sitting in sacrament meeting in their tiny branch, and the girls were kind of being loud.  Becca was trying to keep them quiet, and it wasn't working.  Then out of the blue Sophronia stopped the meeting by shouting loudly, "My butt hurts!"

Good stuff.

I spent the day out in Magna working.  In the morning I cut up some steel fence posts, and that took longer than I'd planned.  Then around noon I headed out to the lot.  When I got there I set to work pulling the wooden stakes off the 2x6's I'd bought to use as forms.  I spent the last few days nailing 2x4 stakes to the boards, then tried to drive them.  Unfortunately, in the battle between the stakes and the ground, the ground won.  I pounded and pounded and pounded away, and after those three pounds, the wood split and fell to pieces.  Thats why I bought the steel fence posts.

I was bending over all morning cutting the posts, then again pulling the forms I'd built apart, then driving the steel post pieces, and when I'd done all that I spent a couple hours clearing some of the thick grass.  My back was quite sore.

When I got home I took a shower, and I noticed that the skin right above my butt was a bit sore.  It felt a little like I had a rash.  That was a bit disturbing   So when I got out of the shower I looked at it in the mirror.  There was no rash.  There was on the other hand, a very clearly delineated patch of livid red sunburn.  All that time bent over today in the sun, it turns out that I had a bad case of plumber bum.  That's the danger of working alone I guess.  There's no one to tell you that your butt crack is sticking out.  And so it goes.

Sophronia, I'm with you on that.  My butt hurts!

At Last...

So, a month later, I seem at last to have mended my motorcycle.  An engine needs three things: air, gas, and spark.  I determined it was getting gas by pulling the fuel line off the hose and sucking on the vent line.  Gas came out.  Then I determined it was getting to the carb by opening the float bowl valve.  Gas came out.

Then I figured out it had compression because when I tried bump starting it slowed and grabbed when I popped the clutch.  But it still didn't start.  And that just left the problem of spark.

I left the spark for last because it meant that I had to pull the body of the bike apart to test it.  And it turned out to be the problem indeed.  I pulled the sparkplug out and put it back in the boot, then grounded it on the engine and hit the starter.  No spark.

First I thought it was the plug, but when I replaced that it still didn't work.  Then I thought it was the coil, but I bought a cheap multimeter and tried to test it, and it seemed to be good.  Then I decided to follow the wiring back from there.  What a mess.  I cut all of the wrapping off the wiring harness.  It took days.  I found  a wiring diagram online, but it wasn't accurate.  I only found that out after following every wire there was.

I got kind of hung up on the start button, and cut it up.  Then I realized it was actually fine, and had to go back and solder it all back together.  Seriously this was all a tremendous amount of work.  And I was working on it all the time.

After I figured out it wasn't the ignition switch I thought it was the starter relay.  I tested that though, powering it with a 9volt battery.  It clicked fine.  Then I thought it was the ignitor.  There wasn't really any good way to test it.  I was really hoping it wasn't that.  It's the most expensive part in the electrical system.  $175.  The coil isn't much cheaper.

Then I followed the wiring back from the ignitor, and thought it was the fan switch.  It wasn't.  Then I thought it was the kick stand sensor.  It wasn't.  Then I thought it was the pulsing coil.  That would have been a real mess, because I'd have had to pull the engine case apart, take off the cam chain and gears and get in behind them.  Happily I tested it at the connector and it was ok.  I checked the battery, but I was pretty sure that was ok, since I'd replaced it only a few months ago.  It actually had run down from all the testing I'd been doing without running it.  So I charged it.  Then I was back to the wiring.  Then when the wiring checked out, I was back to the coil.

I got a copy of the factory service manual, and ran some more detailed tests on the coil.  The secondary coil seemed to be ok, but the primary failed.  This wasn't a good thing because the coil costs about $125.  So I took it to the parts place, hoping they could test it better than I could.  Like I said, my multimeter was pretty cheap.

When I took it to the parts place the guy who helped me took the sparkplug boot off and looked at the lead.  There was no visible wire in the lead.  Turns out that's the bad thing.  I'd have never known it, but the leads deteriorate.  So they sold me a splitter and a little bit more lead.  I took it home, put the gas tank back on, and it fired right up.  Huzzah.

Now I've just got to put it all back together.  The problem is that it's been a month.  I don't really remember how everything fits exactly, and fumbling around the garage for a month I've bumped bits and pieces and knocked out bolts and nuts.  The result is...  we'll see.

Staking...

I spent the better part of yesterday and the day before staking out my lot.  Today I realized I did it
incorrectly.  I'm going to have to do it all over.  Inexperience.  What can you do, except make the mistakes you make.  It's all about learning, huh?

The problem was that I staked out an extra foot on the outside.  I was thinking I was going to need it, so I could form the outside face from the bottom.  Then I realized there's no particular reason to do so.  It only really needs to be even and flat on the outside above grade.  There's no real reason not to use the side of the trench as the form on the outside as well as the inside.  And it will save on costs on the forms.

Besides, I was forgetting a couple of things.  First, I've got to get all the ground up wood and grass off the ground, and second, I've got to lay gravel down.  That means I'm going to end up eight inches above the current grade, rather than the six required by code.  That's probably going to be a good thing, as the grade is below the road on one side, and it could be good for drainage.  Actually the roads are kind of ridiculous there abouts.  At the cross streets you have to go through a ditch that is deep enough, and that rises fast enough to the height of the road that if you are in a car you are definitely going to scrape your undercarriage. I almost do in my truck.

Anyway, it was interesting when I finished staking it out last night.  I walked through counting paces and could visualize for the first time where the individual rooms were, and their proportion.  It's going to fill the lot  more completely than I'd thought originally.  But it will be fine.  It will be good.

We've All Done It...

I was researching Salt Lake County Public Codes in preparation for digging a foundation for my house when I came across this:

14.32.150 - Games on sidewalks, curb ramps or streets.

It is unlawful for any person to obstruct any sidewalk, curb ramp or street by playing games thereon, such as ballgames, quoits, marbles, jumping, rolling of hoops, flying of kites, or coasting, or to annoy or obstruct the free travel of any pedestrian, team or vehicle.

(Ord. 1265 § 22, 1994: prior code § 10-12-6)

I haven't looked, but I suspect there are similar laws on the books in most places, perhaps even in Providence.  If that is the case, I think I've broken the law many times.  I suspect we all have.  I can see the utility of such a law, but can you imagine a policeman trying to enforce it?  Storming in like a bull and breaking up a kid's game of marbles?  Who knew jumping on a sidewalk was illegal?  What about hopping? Can a one legged man who's lost his prosthesis under his bed use the sidewalk?  Surely he'd be moving slowly, as he hopped along obstructing able bodied traffic.

And what's with the games?  Rolling hoops, coasting, quoits?  Can you imagine any kid doing any of these things on the sidewalk in front of you house this afternoon?  They're like a million years old.  Does anyone even remember what "Quoits" is?  I had to look it up.  Here's a lovely drawing of some people playing it.

It seems to me from the picture that it is clearly a game that originated at Hogwarts some time in the late 1700's.  Actually, I guess it is some kind of ring toss game.  

I think any cop who came for kids playing these games on the sidewalk would be wearing a mustache and a silly hat, and a huge double-breasted coat and clodhopper boots.  The ne'er-do-well that they've apprehended in this photo is probably a little old for our purposes, but it serves as illustration.

They'll be dragging any kid who gets nicked away in a horse drawn jail carriage.  The precursor of the paddy-wagon?  It's off to the workhouse for those urchins.

I'm totally going to call the cops and insist they enforce this law if I see any children playing on the sidewalk when I build my house.  I mean it must have current relevance   It was revised just in 1994.  There will be no quoits in my neighborhood.  No sir-ee.

My Truck is New...

Today I did something that seems to have renewed my truck somewhat.  And the great thing is that it only took me about twelve hours of work.  I changed the spark plugs and wires.  What's that you say?  That's a twenty minute job?  Obviously you own a japanese vehicle.  I bought American.  Cause I'm a 'MERICAN.  And american engineers think it is an excellent idea to put spark plugs in the most inaccessible nooks of an engine.  And they have happily deposited the distributor cap at the very back of the engine bay against the firewall, underneath the overhanging intake manifold.  Wow.

To be fair, I was cleaning engine grease around the plug holes as I went along, and periodically got carried away with the tidying.  But it was a terrible job.  The ratchet didn't fit anywhere.  Luckily I bought some universal joint ratchet extensions on a whim, because they were entirely necessary for the job.  They bend at the middle, at the joint, which makes it so you can change the direction the ratchet handle is moving.

Then, the last plug, in cylinder one, was seized.  It seemed somehow inevitable.  This plug was giving me trouble before.  The performance had been pretty horrible, and it was stuttering badly when you accelerated.  This said ignition problem to me.  But only after it said vacuum leak, and compression loss.  Well, those things may also be true, but eventually I figured out that this might be an electrical problem.

A good test for this is to open the hood in the dark and start the engine.  If you see sparks flashing, you have a problem.  Electricity escaping through cracks in the wire boots or a cracked distributor cap can apparently have a significant effect upon power output.  In my case, I think it is quite possible that number one cylinder wasn't firing at all.

In any case, it has done quite well for me.  I took it for a test drive to Papa Murphy's to get a pizza.  Acceleration was far better.  Because, you know, you could.  Not fast, but far faster than before.  Before people had constantly been frustrated following me away from lights.  I'd be juddering up to thirty miles an hour about about a block and a half away from the light, and whoever was behind me would be three blocks on, having gone around me on the right.  So it's better now.  And today wasn't a wasted day.  So that's good too.

Oh, and Laura, about not letting that thing on my leg get infected?

Uh... Too late.

Question...

At some point everyone wonders to his or her self, "Self?  How hard can a 3.5 horsepower lawnmower whip a green tree branch?"

Now you know.

PS-  It's very difficult to take a picture of your leg at that angle.  Try it.  You'll see.

Halle-fricken-lujah...

Someone found my truck today.  It was gone for one week exactly.  It was about four blocks away, parked
in the driveway behind a hostel.  As expected, they stole all my tools, and the stereo and speakers to boot.  I really don't care about the stereo or speakers, but I'm angry about the tools, since the expensive ones belonged to my Dad.  And Autozone.  I guess I'm just angry at the whole situation.  It looks like they used about a quarter tank of gas, so they were driving it around a while.

They did one kind thing for me though.  I didn't have screws to affix the front license plate before, so it was just sitting in the cab.  They did it for me.  I guess they didn't want to get pulled over

Now I've just got to figure out how to fix the ignition.

Hmmmm...

Truck's still gone.  No news from the police.  I've been hoping that they'll just find it out of gas on the side of the road somewhere.  I can't think of a reason for anyone to steal it, except maybe that they wanted all my tools that were in it and didn't think they could carry them all alone.  I don't know.  It kind of baffles me.  But if it isn't found in working condition, it will have cost me about $1500.  It's not a huge amount, but one I can ill afford, being without real employment and engaged in building a house.  I mean I had planned to rent an excavator to break ground, just a couple days after it was stolen.  But I need a truck to drag it to the house.  I'm working on alternatives.

Anyway, I went out to get on my bike this morning to run an errand, and it wouldn't turn over.  I tried whatever I could think of, but couldn't get it moving.  So I walked on my errand.  Then afterward I walked it up the hill to the church parking lot and tried to bump start it.  Have you ever tried to push almost 500lbs. up a hill?  I realized I need more exercise.

I tried a couple of running compression starts, in the parking lot, but no dice.  It just wasn't happening.  I started thinking about it, and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the battery, like it was last time this happened.  I mean I could run the starter again and again.  It just wouldn't turn over.

I then tried getting a bit more speed down the hill on the sidewalk (it's a one way road, up the hill) before my building.  Still, it wouldn't turn over when I slammed it into first.  I got it back in the garage just as the rain and snow started falling again.

I'm trying to have a sense of humor about the state of things.  But it's wearing a bit thin.

Gone...

My truck got stolen out of my garage last night.  I can't understand why anyone would take it.  It's in terrible condition.  I don't think there's a big aftermarket for parts for a stock '89 Ranger.  Especially one with 196000 miles.  I mean anyone driving away would feel that it was in bad shape.  And anyone who looked at the body with all it's dents and crappy black spray can paint job could see that it's not been well cared for.  I don't get it.

The Dangers of Motorcycling...

Today I experienced my first major casualty in the three years I've been riding a motorcycle.  It's really upsetting to me.  In fact I'm having a hard time writing about it because I'm so upset.  It's moments like this that you really have to re-evaluate your life and try to figure out what's really important.

I guess the best way to go about this is just to explain how this happened.  It was approaching 6:00 and the library was closing.  I'd just showered, and took too long cutting my hair.  So I hurried as fast as I could up there on my motorcycle.  I wanted to get a repair manual for my truck that I had on hold.  And I did.

Little could I know what was about to happen.

I went down to Smiths for a couple of grocery items that I needed.  The other day I saw a guy blasting out of the parking lot on a bike there.  He was going fast enough that he lifted off a little when he went over the sidewalk and through the ditch.  He was already leaning into the turn and when his weight came back down on the wheels gravity and friction had it's way with him and he high sided over the bike.  That's the worst type of accident.  A low side you just fall down and slide.  But on a high side you fly over the top of the bike, and come down hard.  It's the high sides that break bones.

Anyway, I went into the Smith's to shop.  I'd only gone in to buy a couple things, but then there were a few things on sale that I was going to need anyway.  Usually I'm a quite good judge of how much stuff I can put in my bag without it becoming unwieldy as I ride home.  But it was those damn sales.  In hindsight I don't know how I could have been so foolish.

As I packed the bag after my purchase it became obvious that it didn't all fit.  And although I didn't think of it at the time, when you're riding a bike you don't want to be distracted by an unwieldy bag.  The last thing that didn't really fit was a bag of oranges.  I didn't want to put them underneath other heavy things.  Unfortunately they are round, and rolly.  I put them on top of the bag, hoping that they wouldn't roll away if I laid my bag on the seat behind me.

I think you can tell where this is going.

The incident came after I turned onto 3rd Ave, going down the big hill.  I felt the oranges shifting behind me, and then it happened.  I felt them go.  And then...

I watched them in my mirror sitting in the road as I drove slowly down the hill.  3rd Ave is a one way road, so I couldn't flip a u-turn and go back for them.  I watched in desperation as one car passed my lovely oranges, then another, then another.  There was no place to park on the bottom of the hill so I could run back up the hill to get them.  I hurried around the block, rushing to try to get back to them as fast as I could.  It was only about 45 seconds.  But when I got back to them, someone had crushed my oranges.  My poor delicious oranges.  Jerks.

So now I'm orangless.  Orangless.  And I have to wonder, is grocery shopping on a motorcycle always a good idea?  I'm orangless.

Police Auction...

So, I still haven't bought a truck.  I've gone and looked at some, but just haven't found anything I wanted to buy.  Mike Forsberg was kind enough to go look at this '89 Ranger for me out in Clarkston, and report back to me so that I didn't have to drive up there.  I feel a little iffy about it, but I think I'm probably going to buy it.  I just can't wait around anymore looking for the perfect deal.  I mean, I think that my hesitation so far has even been more about hesitation itself than about the trucks.  Probably better to just bite the bullet.  I keep trying to tell myself that the trucks I've looked at have only cost a fraction of what I paid for my motorcycle, so I shouldn't be so uptight.  But I'm still me, so what can you do.

Anyway, I went out to the salvage auction again today and looked at a couple of trucks.  There was a bright orange '89 F150 that I thought about bidding on, but when I got out there I found that if they'd had a key for it, it was now lost, and that the doors and hood were locked, and that the passenger side door didn't even have key mechanism in it.  So I looked at the undercarriage and it all seemed to be there, with about the amount of rust you'd expect for an '89.  Maybe a little bit more.  Oh well.

Then  I went out to the police auction, which starts after the viewing on the salvage auction, but before the bidding.  I was worried that they would charge for registration at the police auction, but they didn't.  You just had to show your driver's licence and they gave you a number.

The police auction was full of interesting characters.  Mostly they were hispanic men dressed in cheap flashy clothes.  There were even portions of hard, angry looking guys and jovial smilers among them.  Later it became apparent that the smilers were dangerous in the bidding.  A couple of them would start bidding after it got down to two guys fighting up the price, then one dropped out.  The winner of that first combat would have relief written all over him, and it would be going once, going twice, then one or two of the smilers would bid it up $20 more.  The guy would look stunned, then keep bidding.  The smilers would laugh, and read the other bidder's expression, then let him get it, after a few more jumps.

There was one smiler though who was doing it and unexpectedly won the truck I'd initially been interested in.  He grinned ruefully as he walked up to the shed, and his buddies all laughed at him.  I laughed a little too.  He seemed like a happy guy.  I'd spoken to the auctioneer earlier and he said these two or three guys would drive it up for fun like that and every once in a while they got stuck with something, and would just sell it on later at a small loss.  They were there every week.

There were also a couple of guys I think were Armenian.  At least I overheard someone say that they were.  I guess they were regulars too, and were pretty close dealers.  They stood together and bid viciously, looking furiously at the auctioneer and no one else as they stabbed their placards up in bidding wars.  They bid on two late '90's Chevy Impalas, and won one of them.  They left after getting their claim ticket.

Then there were a few white trash guys, who weren't together, but strangely all had women with them.  Both male and female they looked like methheads, bodies about 40 years older than their age.  The guys were all bald ontop, but had long greasy or frizzy strings of hair down around their shoulders.  And invariably, the women wore taktops and sweatpants and the men wore tshirts with the sleeves cut off.  And they were all sunburned.

And there were a couple of other white guys, young and it looked like half-way hipsters.  They were both goofy, but not in that way that has been embraced by the hipsters, rather just regular goofy.  They had spotted faces and their grins were guileless.  One of them won one of the Impalas after a bidding war with the Armenians that took the price over a thousand dollars.

There was a slick looking black fellow in a silk tshirt who lost the first lot, a huge '70's cabin cruiser boat with faded Nevada tags, to a fat old white fellow who looked a little bewildered at the end of their bidding war.  He looked like a first timer too.  Someone's grandpa who had somehow seen this boat and fallen for it.  The black fellow was bidding for a third party on the telephone, and both he and the old guy went higher and higher.  Everyone else dropped our around $450, but those two went on in $20 increments up to $1680.  When the black fellow ran out of juice he frowned with one side of his mouth and shrugged, then said goodbye to whomever was on the other side of his phone.  The old man was wearing a fleece sweater with a picture of forest, mountains and a sliver moon on a snowy night.  I don't think he entirely believed what he'd just done.

The belle of the ball though was this truck.  It was a '99 Mazda truck, a 4 cylinder manual.  Pretty much just was I'd have liked to buy.  It looks pretty good in the picture, but the description said it had been impounded as evidence.  That might mean that someone had stolen it and gotten caught, but the owner didn't claim it after, or... something else.

Turns out, this time it was something else.  You can't really see it from the picture, but in person the something else became obvious.  That scuff in the racing stripe is a bullet hole.  There are three more in the windshield.  The rear window and the passenger's window are both broken out, and the they are sealed up with plastic that is peppered with stickers that warn of biohazard.  The bed was also sealed with plastic, with the stickers.  It seems that bits of scalp, skull, brains and blood were dried up in there.  There was dried blood on the seat backs, and a large, rumpled piece of butcher's paper covered the bottom part of the driver's seat.  When I asked the cop walking around the lot about it, she said that was where most of the blood had pooled, and that the sphincters had gone in death, so there was feces and urine.

It all belonged to this girl.  Apparently, she and a girl friend had been on a spree of between 9 and 12 armed robberies all over the valley.  I guess it was mostly restaurants at the end of busy nights, and supermarkets.  Initially the police thought it was a guy and a girl, because this one went in and did the robberies while the other drove.  I guess she was kind of big, and she wore a disguise with a top hat, and Groucho Marx glasses, with the nose, eyebrows, and mustache   But in one of the later robberies witnesses identified her as a female when they heard her speak to a restaurant hostess.

She was killed when the police went to serve a warrant on her.  She jumped into the truck and tried to hit the officers.  Also, either she or the other girl had shot at a West Jordan officer at one of the last robberies when he got into a foot chase with her.  So when she went after the cop with the truck they just opened fire.  There were a few bullet holes in the back passenger's side too, and the truck had mashed into a parked car in the street after she'd been hit.  This happened over by Liberty Park.

Her partner was arrested at the Smith's on 8th south and 9th east I think, after having come from robbing another supermarket.  The cops called her on her cell phone and told her they knew where she was, and that they were coming to the store to get her.  She gave herself up.

The dead girl's father couldn't believe it.  He admitted she'd had a heroin problem years ago, but he thought she was clean, and had been for a long time.  She made a living painting murals, and was renting a house.  She played bass at their church services and taught sunday school.

Her mother had asked the other girl not to come around anymore in the old days, because she was still using after the dead girl had been arrested for heroin and had gone to rehab.  The dad didn't know that they'd been hanging out together again.

Kind of a sad story.  They were a few years older than me.

That grinning latino guy got the truck by accident for four hundred dollars.

The Salvage Auction...

So a few days ago I bid online on a 1991 Chevy S10 on a national salvage auction site.  They have a local lot by the railroad tracks, across the street from the refinery.  I didn't go look at it.  It was kind of a spur of the moment thing.  They said it ran and moved under it's own power when it hit the lot, and I thought it was worth a try.  The best bid was $400, and I bid $425.  Six seconds later I had won.  Oh, happy day.

Then, I found out this auction had a minimum price that the seller had set.  It was $550.  They had the option for 24hrs to approve the sale at my $425, or I could just pay the $550.  I decided to stay at the $425, and wait to see if they went for it.  They didn't, and it was to go back to auction today.

This time I decided to go out there and look at it to see if I thought it was worth $550.  I got there late, and didn't know my member registration number, but they looked it up and let me out into the lot.  It was kind of fun.  You walk around in this enormous muddy lot full of rows and rows of smashed up vehicles.  Some of them are whole, like the one that I was thinking of bidding on.  They are usually ones that have been donated to some charity that contracts with the auction company to sell them.

So I went out and poked around, and eventually found the truck.  It was terrible.  In way worse shape than it had appeared in the pictures, and when I opened it up and put the key in it wouldn't start up. The frame was straight, but super rusty.  And the front tires were almost totally bald.  I'm not speaking hyperbolically.  You almost couldn't see any tread, except in the middle.  Bad, bad shape.  And worst of all, it wasn't a manual transmission, like it said in the ad.

Also, the instruments in the dash are about the grimmest, most terribly dull design I've ever seen.  Seriously.  it's the Soviet apartment bloc of vehicle interiors.

The other truck I was considering was in even worse shape.  It looked like a complete derelict.  It seemed like one of those cars that gets left to rust away at the edge of a field.  You couldn't even get in to try the engine, which like the other was supposed to run, because the door handles didn't work.

I did however find a 1979 Ford F150, with an amazing, though austere interior.  I love the old gauges.  They are so much cooler.  And even though dash boards now are made of soft plastics and rubbers so your face doesn't split open when you crash, I so much prefer the look of the steel dash.  In fact, everything about the looks of the truck were better than what you see today.

So I stuck the key in and turned, figuring that given it was as old as I was, and had obviously not been maintained or refurbished  that I wouldn't even get spark, but it started right up and ran beautifully.

If only I could get past the fact that I'd be lucky to get gas mileage in the low teens from it.  I'd definitely have preferred it to any of the others.  Not only do I prefer the style of these old trucks, I like that they are so simple.  I look at vehicles today and all I see are networks upon networks of gadgets that can break.  And even though they aren't necessary to the essential function of the vehicle, if they break the can render it undriveable, or at the very least, unsaleable.

I'd be very happy to just have something that was just an engine, some gauges, windows you can open and close, a heater, and that's all.  I don't even need a stereo.  I'm happy to listen to my little mp3 player.

Oh well.  I'd better go back to the classifieds, because I can't get over that gas mileage thing.

Beardless...

Yesterday I was cutting my hair, standing there looking in the bathroom mirror, and decided to cut it all off.  Well, not the eyebrows.  Or the little bit under my lower lip.  I haven't cut that bit since my mission.  And I haven't shaved my eyebrows since... never?

It's been two years since I've been totally beardless.  The first counselor at church today said he thought it looked good, but I think it makes my face look too short.  Like it needs a couple more inches on the bottom.  I think it's also the fact that my neck has gotten thicker and saggier.  Aging.  What can you do?

Anyway.  Here's my face.

Oh.  And Scooter is officially gone.  I sold the car to the Pull and Save.  I contacted six different scrap yards, but the Pull and Save bid the highest.  The guy hassled me a little about the title, but we worked it out.  It was a little bit of a do to get it to the lot.  It's out by Magna, and I'd siphoned most of the gas out of the tank.  There should have been a couple gallons left, but I found out that the fuel pump doesn't go all the way down into the tank.  And there was a lot of rusty sludge down in the bottom.

Anyway, I only got two blocks away before I ran out of gas.  I'd arranged with Mark LaRocco to meet me there and give me a ride back, so I was really worried about the time.  I ran home as fast as I could, and got the gas can and strapped it on my motorcycle and went back down there.  I put about a gallon of what I'd siphoned out back in.  I also sloshed a bunch all over.

Gas cans are horrible these days.  They have these new nozzles mandated by California law.  They have preventative emissions and safety measures, which make it almost impossible to get any gas out of them.  I disabled two of the three, but there is a little plastic bit on the end that is supposed to make it open a little spring loaded gate in the nozzle when the weight of the gas depresses the nozzle end.

Unfortunately the plastic bit hits the edge of the gas tube before the nozzle makes it in to the little trap door that guards the gas tube.  So the weight of the gas in the can on the catch depresses the nozzle and opens the spring loaded trap door in the nozzle, opening it up and dumping gas all over in the mouth of the fill tube.  Problem.

So you have to wrangle the can and nozzle in a weird way to get them all the way into the fill tube.  It's just irritating.

Anyway, I put in a gallon of what I'd painstakingly siphoned out, and got on the road.  Then it started dying again by the time I got to the 21st south freeway.  So I got off and put another gallon in at a gas station.  By the time I finally got to the Pull and Save I was half an hour later than I told Mark I would be.  Luckily he got lost, and arrived only a couple minutes before me.

It was nice of Mark to drive me back.  He had Jameson with him, and they came in for a few minutes.  These few minutes were enough to teach me that I have the least toddler-proof apartment in the world.  Mostly we just chased him from one dangerous or delicate thing to another until it became obvious that it was time to go.

That was a long and rambling post.

Siphoning...

For three days I've been trying to siphon gas out of the Hyundai's tank.  I foolishly filled it up right before the registration ended.  It is I found out very, very difficult or maybe impossible to get a siphon hose down the gas filling tube in a modern car.  There is a little plastic blocker tied to the housing with springs.  The weight of the gas coming down the tube pushes the blocker down the tube just enough for the gas to fill around it.  But it doesn't really open up enough for a siphon hose to get past it.  At least I wasn't able to make it happen.

Just in case you'd somehow missed it, siphoning gas is a huge pain.  And if you're doing it in a small tight garage it is even worse.  I spent about three hours today pulling up the back seat in the Hyundai, prying off a sealed plate, pulling out the fuel pump, and siphoning gas out the top of the tank.  I did it a gallon at a time with a cheap piece of crap siphon I bought at walmart.  The siphon didn't work at first because it didn't seal where the hoses connected to the pump ball.  I had to take cut up strips of bicycle inner tube and wrap them up and zip tie them on tight to create a seal.

For reasons I don't understand the gas came out of the Hyundai at a trickle that filled the gallon jug I was using in about twenty minutes or half an hour per go.  And there was a lot of fiddling to get it to work each time in the first place.  Then I would transfer the gallon to the Mazda, and that would go fast, but take a while to set up.  And always there were unexpected gas leaks as the pump or the hoses dribbled unseen bits of gas.  So pretty much it got on everything.  What a mess.  But what can you do?  I'm not taking the Hyundai to the scrap yard full of gas.  I finally contacted them and they offered $450 for it.  No sense giving them $35 of gas along with it.