-Woody Harrelson, Zombieland
The car proceeds well, and I'm looking forward to a nice quiet shift tomorrow on the barracks desk. I have a whole stack of library books, a pot of coffee and a relatively nice chair to park it in. I'll have to put up more pictures of the car as it progresses- I've done the roof and hood in black, and the last work I did was on the door panel, whatever the section is called just above the window. Kind of a pain, actually. I did it in red, no real reason, I just thought it looks cool- and it does. Other people who have similar cars, or for that matter the same one, or had the same, note that when these cars were produced, the paint technology had not yet advanced to the point of actually staying on the car. Besides, it's starting to look a lot cooler now anyway, and besides, doing it keeps me busy. I'd like to put up a new ceiling too, but that's kind of on a back burner at this point. Keep the infernal thing running and free of rust first, then worry about the lesser cosmetic details. Sure, I could have just had it detailed, but it wouldn't have been as much fun. It's been a long week, to be sure, culminating in a pt test I stressed about all week, all the more so because I had to put in 10 and 11-hour days all week, with no chance to work out.
And today was rather an adventure. I rolled in around 0900, same as always, helped out around the motor pool, nothing new there, and then had to take a supply run. The gargantuan pallets we had to move needed to be strapped down for the 1/8 mile trip back to the motor pool and the storage area- the result was that I got a new nickname, Spider Monkey, as I was the only person fool enough to go up there and secure the straps. Perhaps we should have set them up before we loaded them- well, hindsight and all that. However, some wit decided to take a trailer and truck rather than just two trucks- the trailer for a PLS (palletized loading system), similar to my own truck, is about the same size as the truck- good idea, bitch to turn. Our motor pool is not exactly PLS-friendly, so we had to do quite a bit of maneuvering to get the thing into place. Or try to, anyway... Herein lies the problem- soldiers are the only thing in the Army not produced by the lowest bidder, and the trailer hitch was no exception. It's a hook and eye type of coupling, with a round ring on the trailer's drawbar (the thing that connects to the front axle, really not unlike a Radio Flyer wagon in structure and design) and the truck has a big locking hook mechanism that holds the ring and tows the trailer. So there we were, moving the truck this way and that, when we hear a tremendous bang. Oh shit, we think, what now? Tire blowout? Air brake line failure? No- the eye on the drawbar snapped clean off- this is a trailer capable of carrying well over 5000 pounds, at least in theory. Well, the upside to this is that the trailer can stay the hell where it lies and we can deal with it on Monday. I don't doubt the trailer's capability to tow 5 large, or the truck's ability to haul it. Just the thing probably last saw action against the Spartans, so there is the question of metal fatigue. Apart from that, the good news is that we got the fool thing unloaded before it decided to go under on us. But we got the trucks unloaded, straps secured, and I managed not to fall off the dizzying heights I had to climb to secure the loads- I would guess maybe 20 feet at the highest. So all in all, a good day. Will this illuminate the seriously flawed design of parking something the length of three Buicks at a slant, with a building on one side and no room to maneuver? I doubt it. Remember, these are senior military personnel we're dealing with here. This setup was designed to look nice, not to be practical. These trucks are capable of running anything you can think of anywhere you can imagine- are they really supposed to look nice? Well, as I've stated previously, what do I know, I'm just a little old grunt. Perhaps in time, not even that. I'm still giving serious thought to going into long-haul trucking when my contract is up. I can live with that. The one thing I can't live with is the thought that hope is but an illusion designed to keep our own mortality at bay- without hope, we are truly destitute, I think. Well, wherever you are, don't drink the Tenafly Viper- or Mad Dog for that matter, though there are some who like it. Randomness- out.
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