My Jeep has issues right now….but I think that I’m going to go to the junkyard and buy a whole rear end instead of pulling the axle and replacing the part that ripped. ( Did you know that a stout steel backing plate could “tear” under pressure? Did you know that when everything goes bad back in a brake drum you can lose all your brake fluid and then you stop being able to stop? There must be a lot of stress when I’m careening down a mountain and need to halt suddenly a couple of times before I get to the bottom….).
So…this will be another thing that I get to learn how to do out in the gravel.
Scotty Kilmer makes it look easy.
It darn well better be.
I’m tired of feeling tired….because of these stupid cars.
I need to bolt something together and TAKE OFF!!
(You know I’m only kidding about this being easy. Nothing on these rusty beasts is easy. I’m toast.)
I’m up and everyone else is asleep and tonight I need to stay up to celebrate my birthday.
I wonder if I’ll konk out on the couch while the party rages around me?
That will make people mad.
I turn 59 today.
Who saw that one coming?
I’m 59 today….which is information that some internet scammer will probably use to bring down my financial empire.
Internet scammers are good at “doing the math”.
You shouldn’t reveal anything.
You’re safer hiding in a deep, dark hole somewhere people can’t see or know you.
“Safer”….that’s what I’m shooting for.
That’s what’s going to get me to 120.
The Jeep is running great now….but yesterday it stopped….stopping great.
The wheel cylinder blew out and I lost my brakes on one of the steep hills behind the post office.
That was exciting.
And….the problem is bigger than I thought.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!
The backing plate….which is a part made out of pretty thick metal….”tore” where the wheel cylinder mounts to the plate….split right down to where it mounts to the axle….err….hub(?)….split to the point where it needs to be replaced before I can start to do a brake job.
There must be a lot of stress back in the parts that stop a heavy Jeep on a bunch of steep, steep hills.
There’s a lot of stress in the driver of a Jeep that has to stop on big, steep hills, too.
Nothing’s split in me, though….just a bunch of little stress fractures that I can’t see.
So…a cheap fix that I can do in the driveway got a lot more complicated.
So…I’m back to driving the Toyota on the route.
Good I got used to driving the old truck while they were replacing the engine in the Jeep….a job that (because I was patient) took 4 months.
That’s a long time to replace an engine.
That’s a crazy, long time to have my Jeep sitting in somebody’s shop.
Patient=passive schmuck…sometimes….even if I only heard that comparison in my own head.
(That’s what you call “good self-talk”.)
Maybe a good birthday resolution is to start yelling at people a lot more?
I’m going to be a SQUEAKY WHEEL if I can ever keep a rig on the road.
I’m going to be a bitchy old man if it kills me.
Mail Jeep.
Good grief….it’s a love/hate thing, for sure.
And….what a speed bump having no brakes can be!
Anyway….it’s my birthday.
My family’s all here with me….sleeping right now.
How much better could I have it than that?
I have the perfect life that everyone talks about.
About mid-way through this video, Roberta Price tells the story of a communal get-together that Ken Kesey was at.
She mentions that Further, the famous and wildly painted bus that Ken Kesey and company used on to get around in on the “acid trips” …..ummmmm…..trips….was there and that everybody wanted to have their picture taken with such a famous “artifact”.
This communal get-together was at the end of the 60’s….so it was only a couple of years after all of Kesey’s bus related hi-jinks.
Only a couple of years later, and the folks were already nostalgic for something that had happened a little while before.
Even in their “own time”….nostalgia makes them corral iconic memories into a counterculture theme park….hop on the bus for a picture with “history”!
That’s funny.
I love the energy of the communes….but I don’t know how I feel about it all now that I’m older and have a family.
You have to be blindingly idealistic and pretty selfish to do some of the things these folks did.
When I read Kerouac now, I think that he was a pretty selfish alcoholic douchebag.
Some of these “heroes” weren’t very heroic.
But, if I was unemployed and had a bunch of time, I’d be building weird structures with trash, too.
Nah.
Probably not.
Well….maybe.
My used to be is a malleable thing…..inside my head.
It has a lot of potential in the “why, I might have done this or I might have done that” department.
