April 3, 2005 - Sunday | 2:07 PM, CST

I'm glad my April Fools joke worked so well. And I'm especially proud of Zach and Andy to have caught it. To the rest: shame on you! I'd keep this site running if it was the only thing I could afford to do just to anger and confound my enemies. I am unstoppable!

And now for some truck news. Yesterday, in anticipation of some good helling, Nathan and I replaced a U-joint on my passenger-side front tire. This resulted in fixing the little problem my truck had of producing a rattling noise that told the unwary passenger "I'm going to fall apart and burst into flames at any moment! Hahaha!" The repair went relatively well... time wise. But we did run into a small problem.

You see, one of Ford's mistakes was to use something called a caliper pin rather than a nut and a bolt to keep the brakes held together. When we took the tire off, we noticed that one of these pins was missing. With only one caliper pin in place, my brakes were held to the rotor by luck and the existence of the tire rim. So there's another sixteen bucks (sixteen bucks!) down the drain. But everything went smoothly. And did I mention that I finally got my new CB in good working order? Yes, I took it to Steel Rod's and they applied some tightening to a few things and added some solder to a few other things. Nothing I couldn't have done myself, but in any case the CB works beautifully.

Nathan and I took our trucks out the day before yesterday for a range check. We were speaking to each other semi-comfortably at four miles! Later on in our range test, I sat on the bridge in Iroquois and Nathan was driving along in front of Sheldon near the ditch. We will still picking each other up! And now my truck looks very insectoid with its twin antennae, and there is a mass (albeit an orderly one) of CB wiring along my dashboard. But an excellent development, I tell you.

So, with my plans for world domination all falling into place, Nathan's friend came over and we went out helling. Our destination was Sheff. Nathan got stuck two and possibly three times (I can't remember). But the strange part is that the place was hopping with other people! When we first arrived, someone was on the north end walking their dog. A little while later, we passed a pile of wood and I remarked to Nathan that I'd like to come out sometime with a chainsaw and cut it up for campfires. Not ten minutes later, someone came out with a chainsaw and began cutting at the pile of wood we had just remarked upon. How's that for strangeness? About twenty minutes later, we were on the north side across the road, and a Blazer showed up and sped down to the south end.

We ended our day by following a newly made four wheeler track through the brush on the north side, all the way to the next road. It was very harrowing, because the four wheeler path was extremely narrow and bounded on each side with angry sounding trees and briars.

Later, at night, we decided to go to the road near Morocco that is overgrown with trees and three foot deep pot holes. I wish I'd have brought my camera! Kelly and Spinner rode with me in my truck, Nathan and his friend were in Blue, William brought Amy in his truck, and Jason brought Bloomer in his truck. We all made it through relatively safely, with everyone getting stuck at least once (though for the most part much more than once). On our way home, bad karma struck Jason and his truck began overheating.

As it turns out, he believed that his transmission went dead. Thank you One Professional? Anyway, Jason had to be towed home all the way from the beginning of that road into Sheldon. It made for a slow journey. And in the spirit of all our trucks, what with something being fixed and another thing going bad - my windshield wiper motors are starting to fail. They've been making a pitiful noise this last week, and now they have begun moving jerkily across the windshield.

But as Nathan, William, Jason, myself, and yes, even Zach, will tell you: its worth it.

And lets all wish Kristy luck with her job interview.

grokkings

Mom has the dog's AKC registration papers framed on the wall.

different crap

Ghost hunting    7/23/02

other people

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