A BEER SWILLING DERELICT.

I have a tree hanging dead in another tree. Six trees with heavy over-story hanging above my roof, upstairs deck and guest-house. My tree guy called and said he couldn’t make it on Thursday. Aha! A free day. I quickly decided to attend a meeting in the Bay Area, roughly 120 miles away. So down to the service station I go to have my tires checked.
Ray, from Nash’s Chevron in Angels Camp, drew two circles around spots on my tire where the steel is showing through.  “I wouldn’t drive this car to the Bay Area”,  he told me. Shoot! Couldn’t get new tires to match until Friday. I return home. Oh, well, I can take the truck to the Bay.  I don’t drive it very much. I struggled to open the hood, it is old and tight. Yikes!  I found chewed acorn debris inside the engine- not a good sign.   Couldn’t get the lid off to check the coolant. Left front tire practically flat. Checked my tag, yipes!  I’m over-do for service. Luckily Ethan at Nash’s can get me in at 4:00.

I slowly drive to Pinacle therapy with my soft tire, late for my appointment and apologizing. I hate it when I’m late, I’m frazzled. But,Theresa Locke is the greatest. She get’s to know you and your habits, and can define intricate muscle movements. Its about caring and time and evaluating. I can’t say enough good things about  Theresa. I have such confidence in her as does everyone who meets her.


And her staff is great too. Dulcie, Lea and Jessie, allowed me to take their picture. Lea hammed it up and gave me some good advice. You know how guys go to the barbershop and discuss the game or their car problems with the barber?  Well, Lea gave me some good advice as I told her my woes. “People on the prairies, where they have problems with prairie dogs, leave their hoods open and the rodents won’t chew up wires and stuff on the engine.”  What a team.

This is what Lea really looks like.

Back to Nash’s. Jeff has the station on a new computer system and he gets me entered into it. Nash has been taking care of my vehicles  for 30 years.   It is nice to have someone you trust to do good work and always take care of your needs.

The good news is the tire is fine. It  just needed air from sitting too long.  Bad news is the oil pan plug has been replaced so many times with a bigger and bigger plug to prevent leaks, it is going to need replacement next time. And, “I wouldn’t drive this car to the Bay Area with that plug. Better test it on a short trip,”  Ethan told me.  He drove it around town about five miles. It was dry and without a leak.  I promised I’d watch the gage and pull over at the first hint of a problem.

I’m a bit red-faced. This is the rat’s nest Ethan found sitting on top of my air conditioning filter. Red faced also because my truck was so dirty. It sits under trees with leaves and twigs and bird droppings and rats…arrgh!  Ethan told me, you just put a bar of Irish Spring in your engine well and the rats won’t bother it again.

The full service car wash in Angels Camp had just closed.  I settled for the car wash in Murphys where you have to get out in the heat and vacuum the inside yourself and wipe down everything.  Some days are like that!
I went home and couldn’t wait to get in the door and swill down a nice cool brew. I shuddered at how dirty and neglected I’d let my trusty truck get. It needs some tender loving care instead of being owned by a beer swilling, neglectful derelict.

BAD NEWS RUNS IN THREES?

I popped a tire, had it fixed and my mechanic informed me another tire has a split in it. He wrote on my service tag, do not drive over 50 mph, nor farther than 200 miles.

My brother came to stay for a week and revealed to us that he has cancer.

And, I had a fire from dumping ashes in my compost bin that nearly took out my greenhouse.

When I tried to move pictures from my camera to a file, even though I highlighted all of the pictures, only one picture moved. I erased the rest from the camera and it is still too dark to take new ones. The year 2012 is off to a troublesome start.

Bad news  is said to run in threes. I’ve had my three. Tomorrow will be a better day. I know it because, truth to tell, I've had much more good luck in my life than bad luck.

OH BOY! SOME ADVENTURE!

Some adventures are questionable,  like this one:

Returning from Sonora, I stopped at a gas station. The driveway is practically a block long, how can you miss it?  A sweeping curve is not sweeping. It has an impediment, a curb. Pop!  I hit the curb with my back right tire.

Road service arrived. Vic's guy was terrific.

He said, "Happens all the time. You think your back end will follow through. I've hit that same curb myself.  That driveway was widened and they didn't do it  right."  True or not, he made me feel better about a lousy and expensive fix. He told me the tire got pinched and isn't fixable.

My consolation prize?  A meltingly beautiful sunset.  Life is beautiful.

A BIG LOAD

My friend Ron sent me an email with pictures of this "Big Load" moving on public roadways. 

For the past few weeks, a "super heavy" load has been making its way from Hardeeville SC, enroute to Boiling Springs NC. It is a large electric generator destined for a clean coal power plant. The generator weighs in at 1.98 million pounds and isn't something you just jump on an interstate freeway with and truck it on down the road. 
The whole thing kind of made me wonder how the Chinese would move this big generator. Since I visited China and saw how they use more manpower than machine power, even in their road building efforts, this gargantuan project made me curious. I remember people carried huge loads on their bicycles, tricycles and small motors. It was very interesting and I took many pictures but none as good as this series that I received in an email. 

Tires are really quite easy to stack. And moving a ladder with a bike (in the background) is nothing. But, just try it.

 

This guy doesn't even have the advantage of a bike. He has to keep moving. No one in China thinks a thing of a load like this. Its very common.

It doesn't matter what you have to carry, if it stacks, it moves. 

 

Stacking is an art in this country.

 

A great place to visit.