You Must Whip It

I heard Devo has an upcoming album but I didn't expect the comeback tour to start in my living room!

Doors? We don't need no steenkin' doors

One of my current projects is to get the old truck ready enough for the trip to Camp Heep this year. Camp Heep is an annual wheeling trip for NovaJeepers. To reach this goal I have a list of to-do items twenty feet long! One item on the list was to replace the jouncy bench seat with something more suitable for creeping along rocky trails. I picked up a pair of bucket seats out of a Celica AllTrac that were past their prime for the car, but still full of life for a 37 year old pile of rust truck. After a little (alright, a LOT) of experimenting with mounting locations and methods I drilled a few holes and turned a few bolts. I now have a perfectly positioned chair that won't send the top of my head into a high speed collision with the roof at the smallest road imperfection.

Constructo Boy

As we tore down the shed and loaded the trash into the trailer Jack began to select pieces from the pile of debris. He then wandered over to the workshop and selected a hammer. When asked what he was doing he replied "I'm building Murphy a dog house". Bob Vila or Handy Manny he is not, but he cobbled this doghouse together all by himself!

Demolition Man

I've been talking about tearing down this shed for the past two years. Over the ten plus years we've lived in this house the shed slowly deteriorated. After building a new and larger shed to function as my workshop (thanks Vance!) I simply ignored the older shed and allowed it to die a slow death. Animals took up residence in the attic section of the shed, the footings failed and caused the shed to lean to one side, and the wood on many parts had simply rotted away.

After listening to me complain about wanting to tear down the shed and watching me not do anything about it for so long, my wonderful wife finally suggested we tear it down over a three day weekend we both had off. She even offered to help. So early one Friday I came home from work and started the project. My beautiful bride slept. I removed the dormer from the roof balancing on an extension ladder and sweating. My helpful partner went shopping. Wait just a minute....where's my help?I reached this stage shortly before Mandi and Jack returned from shopping. Jack wanted nothing to do with this project. Smart kid! Mandi helped tear apart some pieces and load up the trailer. (Did I mention it was 96 degrees with super high humidity?)

Right before the picture above was taken Mandi and I were the center of entertainment for several of our neighbors. I neglected to account for the instability of the last wall standing and nearly had the entire wall fall onto the fence. Or the trailer. Neither was a great landing place! So I balanced the wall by applying all of my weight to the sill plate while Mandi ran for a strap and tied the wall off - now we could pull the wall down in the direction we wanted it to go. As we prepared to yank on the strap and send the wall crashing down we spotted the neighbors gathered in an adjacent backyard watching us with a mix of bewilderment and amusement. Hoping to live up to our billing as "The Best Free Redneck Entertainment for 100 miles", we wrapped ourselves tight with the strap and sent the wall tumbling down with a bang! No applause, no tip, nothing!


So now we have a big empty spot where the rotten shed used to stand. Planty of new parking for the trailer and truck!

Anyone Need A Mechanic?

Jack torques the lugs after a long afternoon of fixin' stuff.

The Volvo needed new CV axles - well, it only needed new outer boots, but it was more cost effective to replace the entire shaft instead of just the boots- so Jack and Daddy raised the car up and started throwin parts.

Here the Volvo looks a little like the hovering Delorean time machine from Back to the Future!

A Good Walk Ruined

I've heard the game of golf referred to as "a good walk ruined'. To those who play golf this statement elicits a wry laugh of understanding. For sometimes the game is noble - athletes taking the gently massaged fields of nature, battling not only against the design of the course but against their own physical and emotional realities as well. Other times a round of golf can certainly become a tortuous ordeal.

To ruin any activity I enjoy requires a mix of many things. I can usually navigate around obstacles that might decrease my enjoyment of said activity. The weather is super hot? Not a problem- drink lots of water and marvel at the amounts of sweat you generate! The course is difficult? Again, not a problem - I enjoy a challenge and besides, I brought twenty sleeves of golf balls! The players around me are drinking slightly more alcohol than a pre-monitoring-ankle-bracelet Lindsey Lohan - hmmm, Houston, we're gonna have a problem.

I recently played in a charity golf tournament. Put on by the County Police. The event was well run, the officers were great, and the course was spectacular. A few other aspects of the day however, combined forces to create "The Perfect Storm" of bad golf rounds. I have no problems with adults drinking alcohol. Most can handle their beer and liquor just fine. The issue I have is when adult males seem to be stuck in their frat boy days and think it is a sign of manliness to drink as much as possible. When a group of four starts a round of golf with thirty beers and stops at the turn to replenish - well, that's a bit excessive. You might think that being surrounded by police officers might inspire some restraint and you would be thinking incorrectly!( I'm almost certain you can get a DUI whilst driving a golf cart.) I guess I just don't understand why there is a need to lubricate oneself quite so heavily - for any reason, much less at a public event.

The tournament was four player team, best ball round. A great format for me, since everyone plays a shot from the location of the best hit ball each time. Saves me alot of time in the woods, ya know?! The group I was with consisted of two other guys that play pretty well. Our fourth member had to bail out of the tournament at the last minute, so we rotated the fourth shot each time. I've never hit so many golf balls from the fairway before! Usually I am routing around in the overgrown brush at the edge of the course looking for a ball I've hit poorly, so this was a welcome change!

So the elements that conspired to ruin my perfectly good 'walk'?

-The weather was incredibly hot. Like 92 degrees with no breeze and humidity approaching 100 percent hot. I kept tripping over something at every tee box; I finally realized it was Satan's tail - he was hanging with our group because the course was hotter than hell.

-The amount of sleep I got before the round. I mentioned the round started at 8am. Registration was at 7am. I worked overnight until 4:30am. You can plot out the timeline if you wish, but there wasn't much time to for me to rest.

-I had not played ANY golf in the month and a half leading up to the tournament. If you are already a poor playing newbie, taking a 50 day break from the game doesn't do anything to lower your score.

-The people around me were drinking. I went over this above, but let's face it - I don't like the smell of beer nor do I like hanging out with guys who are completely @$#% -faced. (The two guys in my group were fun to hang out with. I know them from work and they were pretty lightweight - they only had three beers apiece over eighteen holes.)

-The course was tough. When even an old Scot leans over to mention "I'm never aseen aye course with'en a mess 'o swales as this 'un"...you know the course is a toughie.

Add all of this up and you end up with a day that just wasn't much fun. In the future I think I will be much more selective of the groups I play a round with. It might be time to play a few holes at the quiet par three up the road. The walking will do me good, the course layout will improve my iron play, and I doubt that the bluehairs that play the course in the early morning hours will be boozing it up!