Well, I had one of those days today.
Got off work at 8:00 am, running just on time to my scheduled dental appointment that I have been waiting 2 months for. (not that I really was looking forward to seeing the dentist)
Anyway, I had a full load of large lodgepole pine rounds loaded in my 74 Highboy that I had cut on the way to work. I was heading toward Gardenerville Nevada, fearing the inevidable sharp metal objects that were about to be scraping and grinding within the largest of the oraphace's in my face, when I noticed a large cloud of white smoke pouring from behind my truck. Luckily, there was a place that I could pull over and check it out. As I glanced at my temp gauge, then my oil pressure gauge, and noticed that the engine still appeared to be sending normal readings to the gauges, I simultaneously turned the key to the left and shut down the engine. Well, that was one good thing.
So I got out and looked around, unable to find any broken coolant hoses or anything else out of the ordinary, but did notice that there was the smell of antifreeze in the air, and the headers on the left side were still steaming.
Then I saw it, a freeze plug had been completely blown out. Wondering why a freeze plug would blow out of an engine that only has approximately 1000 miles on it kind of began to **** me off. Okay, calm down, I have to get her going again and make it to the dentist for my long awaited torture treatment.
Well, with nothing in sight, but a casino back the other way, I walked about a mle and a half back there. Called the wife at her work. She was on her way to a meeting. She never goes to meetings!!!! Untill now right?
Okay, I guess I'm on my own, so I called the dentist and advised of my absence. (in a way I was glad that I had a great excuse) Then I walked back to my truck to secure my chainsaw and 10 gallons of gas in cans so someone didn't get any ideas that they needed them more than me.
So I get to the truck and can't find my keys. ARRG! Then things began deteriorating even worse when I noticed that they were in the ignition. Okay, so my saw is in the cab, but the gas cans are in the back. I suppose I can live with that, well, except that if someone should see the keys in the ignition, #%*@@!%$!!!
So I broke into the cab through the back window and managed to open it without damaging the clip. Thought for sure I would be leaving my truck with a chainsaw labelled "please take me". It just popped open and was still operational. Wheww...
Now here's where it gets interesting, I walked around the front of the truck and stuck out my thumb for the first vehicle I saw, which immediately appeard when I was tripping over a rock to get my thumb out. Guess what? He stopped! I got a ride all the way into Gardenerville Napa Auto Parts.
The rest of this all seems to be good luck (well I guess it depends on how you look at it). I bought one of those rubber freeze plugs and a 1/2 inch wrench to tighten it in, and got back on the highway.
Within 50 yards, I got a ride to the south end of Gardenerville. Then again, within about 100 yards or so, I got a ride all the way to my truck. YIPPIE!!!
Got the freeze plug in and drove back to the casino to top off the radiator with water, then back to Gardenerville to show the dentist that I did the best I could (hoping he wouldn't charge me for the no show) .
Well, when I arrived at the dentist, they advised me that they had another cancellation and they could sneak me in. ARRG.
I think he may have been a little PO'ed at me because he wasn't really gentle.
Okay, I got that all out of the way, now off to home to enjoy some FTE entertainment. Looked in the fridge and NO BEEEEERRRR AAAAH!!!!
So I goes down to the basement and raid the warm ready reserve, and put a few in the freezer to get a quick chill on them and proceeded to unload the wood out of my truck.
After I got done with that, I loggs on the computer and pull one of those cold beers out. While my computer is booting up, I opens up that well deserved Miller High Life. Mmmm, this is gonna be sooo good. Until I notice that the beer is flowing over the top of the bottle and on to my key board. So I quickely pulled the bottle to my mouth, to not waste any more beer. It kept foaming and foaming over the top. That sucker was well frozen and would not stop foaming over. Now noticing that my teeth are beginning to cause me GREAT GREAT pain from the dental work, I runs to the kitchen sink.
Now here I sit, and I have to ask myself... Am I really a lucky man today?
Me thinks so. With all the stuff that happens to us in our lives, when we pull through and look back at the big picture, it's all mostly little stuff, and it's all an adventure. I just am thankfull that God is on my side. Even when things were looking bleek, they all worked out in the long run. Now the twist of fate that led to a teeth freeze after the dentist, I have to say, the old man upstairs must have a one sick sense of humor.

Okay, I think I've given those beers enough time to thaw enough for consumption now. Thanks for listening.

Lets hear one of your stories of a bad, challenging, or just plain weird day.

Cheers, T

 

You gots to be Irish and Catholic to mention God and Beer in the same paragraph!

"I have to say, the old man upstairs must have a one sick sense of humor."

 

Haaa, just a smidge. Mostly Kraut though. A good mix of beer drinkin' ancestries non the less.

 

I was driving that same stretch of road just the other day. I was staying at South Shore with my parents and brother and their family and we decided to do some wheeling. I like to go to blue lakes so we headed that way. After spending an hour on the Pioneer Trail / HWY 50 intersection we finally made it over to 88 which is when I noticed we really should be getting some more fuel. No problem, we'll just cruise down to Markleeville. Um no diesel to be found so we headed down to Gardnerville.

We ended up going up to the snow which was cool because the kids haven't ever been to the snow since they live in San Diego.

 

Jeez Tim...a story like that makes me just want to stay in bed!

Okay, I guess this isn't quite so bad but since it's yesterday, it's still fresh in my memory.

My grandfather is 95 and has been living in Ukiah since he came up from Fresno in '93. We're all over here in Lake county, about 40 miles away. My mom drives over to see him, shop for him take him to church and out to lunch a couple of times a week. This has been getting a bit old and she's been trying to talk him into moving to Lakeport for the last three years. She finally succeeded, and we've been working on the move for the last month or so. Yesterday was The Big Day. I took two days off from work last week already (with Labor day that made 5 days in a row that I spent packing and hauling...gave the old F250 a good workout!) and then took yesterday off as well. Lots of wages lost these past two weeks. So I picked up the U-haul yesterday morning ('96 F350 with a fresh 460) and drove it over to Ukiah, encountering a 30-minute wait for road construction along the way. Great, behind schedule already. Finally got there at about 10:00 and started loading up. Spent the better part of the day in doing so till I got a call from a fellow FTE moderator who was on vacation and happened to be passing through Ukiah just then, so I met him for lunch. (Including Clint, that makes two fellow FTE members that I've now met face-to-face) So that was a good thing, anyway.

Back to the grind, packing and loading. My help through all this was my mom and her gentleman friend and my older sister. My mom's friend went home about 5:00 and I headed back over the hill to unload at Gramp's new digs...with the temp about 95º. The U-haul had A/C...and an overheating problem which I quickly discovered, which meant off with the A/C and down with the window. And then I encountered the bucking and surging problem climbing hills with a load. Spiked the temp gauge...who cares, not my truck as long as the thing doesn't up and die on me...not my usual attitude, but by this time I was tired and sore, and still had the unloading to look forward to. But no matter, my bro-in-law would be there to help so it would go quickly!

I finally arrived at Gramp's where my sister and bro-in-law were already there ahead of me, in mid-argument when I walked in the door. (My sister was actually bowing down and genuflecting to her husband...sarcastically of course!) Thsi didn't do much to improve his mood and he stormed out. leaving the unloading to me. Somehow, I knew it would come to this...

So I unloaded the truck pretty much single-handedly, finishing and arriving home around 9:30 without even enough energy left to take shower, and a full day's work to look forward to today beginning at 7:00 AM.

Moving is sooo much fun, especially when you're moving someone else.

On the plus side, it's nice to have Grandad close to home where we can see him every day. He'll be a lot less lonely now.

So all in all, I'd say it was worth it...

 

I have seen both over the years - and you can take this to the bank, the girls are more interesting to look at when at the beach rather then when in the snow. I will take San Diego any time!

But you sure had a nice ride!

 

Snow bunnies in spandex, Clint. Leaves very little to the imagination...

 

Mmmmnnnn...snow bunnies in spandex...makes me wish I were a skier

 

I think I deserve the knucklehead-of-the-day" award though.

Spent all day today running around to differnt lawnmower shops lookng for a little clip-doohicky thing to attach the govenor rod to the carb linkage on a 5HP Brigg engine.

After the 5th or 6th shop, I found a place that actually had it on the counter...previously had called most of them and they all said "oh yeah, I'm sure we have it"...anyway, so after 4 hours of driving shop to shop, the place had it..

Cool, 3 bucks and change, I open my wallet, pull out a 5, then reached into my pocket for some change...

In the midst of counting out the 33 cents, I found the little clip-doohickey thing.

I now have a spare

 

Fat Diesel,
When I first saw the picture in your post, I thought I recognized it as Forstdale Divide Road. Then I read on your post that you were in the Blue Lakes area. Tell me, is that in fact Forestdale Divide, between Red Lake and Blue Lakes?
If so, that's cool to see such a familiar place, where I recognize the picture on the internet.

 

Oh that is too funny. I can just imagine what was going through your mind after you wasted the day looking for that doo hicky. Right there the whole time. That's like looking all over the house for your glasses when your wife says, "they're sitting on the bridge of your nose". Doooah!

 

Tiger Dan,
I know how it feels being the nice guy and getting stuck the only real physically capable one to do the job. My wife has two sisters. Her parents (elderly) live about 20 minutes down the hill, in the valley. We all got together and painted the parent's house.
Guess who slepped the hardest each day.
Don't get me wrong, the girls helped out alot. The three of them together was quite the team. I'll leave it at that. I'm still wore out.

 

Well, today was another good one. After all the time I'd had to put into this move I was looking forward to working on one or two of my own projects. I went into town with the plan of picking up a few things for Grandad, buttoning up a few loose ends around his place and checking him out on his new scooter, which I was bringing with me and then heading home to work on my stuff for once!

While at Kmart I got a call from a guy whose truck I did a lot of work on over the winter. To back up a bit, he sort of cheaped out on the electric fuel pump for it and I fixed him up with a used one I had as a temporary measure, till he could buy one. It let him down once already and I had to rebuild it for him out on the side of a mountain a few weeks back, so he didn't trust it anymore. I told him to go down to NAPA and order a certain one on Tuesday and I would install it after work on Wednesday. He didn't, so I couldn't. I thought, "fine, to hell with it then."

Yesterday he called me at work about 4 times for help as he was trying to install one himself that he'd picked up from Kragen's, not NAPA as I told him. (The local Kragen's is a joke.) The guy is decidedly not a mechanic.

I didn't hear any more from him by the time I got off work so I assumed he'd gotten it okay, so I went on over to Grandad's to do some work there, then went home.

So, back to "The Call" today at SearsMart: He was all pissed off at me, saying there were major problems with the the truck and he was trying to use it to do a concrete job and couldn't even leave the shop with it; gas was sitting in the manifold and running down the side of the motor all over the starter, and then the motor locked up. The inference being that I must have screwed something up.

So I dropped what I was doing and went over to his shop, looked at the truck and had him turn the key on, sure enough, fuel was spilling out the carb bowl vents. I asked him about the pump he'd put on, he said it was $130.00 Bosch pump that the guy at Kragen's said would work just fine for what he wanted. I asked to see the box and any paperwork that came with it, but there was no info on PSI or GPM ratings. He went over to Kragen's and asked them to look it up while I pulled the plugs and spun the engine over to blow out the gas that was hydraulically locking it up. He came back and told me that they had no info on it, so I had him find me a 0-100 PSI pressure gauge, which I stuck in the end of the fuel line to the carb and had him turn the key on...45 PSI, just a little high for a carb. Good ol' Kragen's had happily sold him an EFI pimp for a carbed engine.

He went back to Kragen's to stick the fuel pump up the...well, you get the picture! He came back with a new aftermarket pump in the 5 PSI range which I installed and got him going. They threw in an oil change for him to help make it right.

So by the time I got out of there and back to KMart it was after 1:00 and I was soaked with gas. After dealing with stuff at Grandad's and taking him out to lunch, I just got home a little while ago. Doesn't look like I'll get the day off tomorrow either...

Oh well, it's all good, I suppose...

 

If they are giving him an oil change just to make it right, what are you going to give him? Maybe you should buy him a tank of gas to make up for all the gas that was spilled!



Actually, if the world was fair, he would give you his oil change!

 

All he gave me was.. the shaft! I'm not feeling terribly inclined to do any more work for this guy...