Thursday, July 30, 2009
Dear Universe,
Why do you hate me? I've tried to be a reasonably decent person the past few years. Gave up smoking last January. I don't poke dogs with sticks. I try to help my friends out when they need help. Yet, time and time again, you fuck me.
Take today, for example. I had volunteered to drive to San Antonio for Todd to pick up his rebuilt motor for his circle track car, you know, since I am still jobless and all (despite having not one, but two, yes two fucking Liberal Arts degrees!). I figure there's one thing I am good at, and that's driving, so I was glad to be able to help a buddy of mine out, someone who has helped me for over 17 years with various car related issues.
So I meet Todd at his place at 11:30am, get the keys to his turbo diesel dually (looks like this but a different color),
 |
| Big Fucking Truck |
and get on my way. Some people might be intimidated by a bigass manual transmission turbo diesel dually, but not me. I've driven a freakin' 5-ton army truck with a 15,000 pound howitzer towed behind it through the swamps of Louisiana at night while wearing shitty night vision goggles. Since having done that, trucks don't worry me.
Now, first order of business: stop by his shop and grab a tire for the motor to sit in during the ride back. He wants me to grab one of his used bigass racing slicks for this. However, once I have said tire in the bed of the truck, I realize that putting an assembled motor on that tire would put it WAY up in the air in the back of the truck, so, being the smart guy that I am, I grab one of his old trailer tires as well, just in case.
Second order of business: get food on my way out of town. I was leery about eating in Todd's truck, but I hadn't eaten lunch yet. His wife had kindly offered me a slice or two of pizza while I had been at their house but I passed because I had eaten pizza the night before and I'm trying to work on minimizing my carb intake as part of a plan to lose more weight. Plus, I figured I could save a bit a time by eating on the road. Thus, I stopped at Sonic on my way out of town and got a burger, tater tots, and soda. Yeah, yeah, carbs, but I hadn't had a burger or tots in a while so I caved. Regular sized soda though.
Then I heard, "Would you like to upgrade to a Route 44 soda?"
No, I don't want to upgrade to a drink the size of a fucking artillery round. It's bad enough that I had caved in and ordered a real soda instead of a diet one (I only keep Coke Zero and Diet Lipton Green Tea in my apartment as part of my efforts to cut back on my carb/sugar intake), I didn't want one the size of Rhode Island.
"No, thanks, I'll pass."
"The upgrade is free, sir."
"Oh, in that case, okay."
I can quit smoking cold turkey, but I guess I can't pass up a free fucking upgrade to 44 icy ounces of soda sugary goodness.
Food procured, I hit the road.
After making the turn from Texas Avenue onto Hwy 21, I decided it was time to taste some of the wonderful flavors of the 44 ounces of Dr. Pepper that were calmly contained in the cup holder under the gear shifter (the dually has a 6-speed manual transmission).With no traffic around me, and no upcoming lights, I reached down, grasped the cup, and began to lift it towards my mouth, my eyes on the road. Then I felt a startling resistance on the top of the cup and glanced down just in time to see the top of the cup meet the bottom of the gear shift lever, which dislodged the cup from my hand. In slow motion, I watched the 44 ounce cup of icy Dr. Pepper tumble to the left. In slower motion, I watched the lid, with straw still embedded, fly off the cup as the cup tilted past the horizontal. I remember thinking, "Oooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" as the entire contents of the 44 fucking ounce cup that I didn't want in the first fucking place flooded the truck's center console and driver's side floor mat and carpet. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck! Todd's going to kill me!, I thought as I pulled into some sort of abandoned gas station in Bryan in a neighborhood where I could probably get some badass crack if I was so inclined.
I immediately started trying to sop up the mess with the two or three pitiful squares of white tissue paper that Sonic calls napkins. Yeah, that worked brilliantly. At least they had given me napkins. If I had gone to McDonalds, they sure as fuck wouldn't have. Fuckers.
I exited the vehicle and removed the floor mat, shaking it outside the vehicle like one might a dusty rug. This worked fairly well, as the little cubes of ice that Sonic is famous for went flying. I then prioritized that the actual carpet needed to be tackled first, to avoid permanent staining. However, I was now out of napkins. Luckily, I found a fairly clean rag in the bed of the truck and I attacked the carpet.
That's when it started fucking raining. In a town in a state which has been experiencing a drought for most of the fucking summer, it fucking started raining. Not a nice, light, summer drizzle, but a full on "You want some rain, mother fuckers? I'll give you rain!" kind of rain. I could do nothing but put my head down and continue to work on the carpet.
After a few minutes of this, the carpet was as good as I was going to get it without a proper shampoo and vacuum and I was wet and pissed off, which made for an unpleasant change from just pissed off. Time to tackle the icy soda which had collected in the various spaces of the center console.
Have you ever seen the center console for a big fucking truck? There's a SHITLOAD of little areas designed to hold loose change, garage door openers, pens, knives, 44 ounce fucking drinks, etc. Of the 44 ounces, a solid 22 ended up in these cup-like areas instead of on the carpet or floor mat. I removed the pens, knives, garage door openers, and spare change from the recesses and began scooping out little cubes of ice in my hand and flinging them out the still-open door. I looked like I was bailing out a boat except instead of being in a boat and bailing out water with, say, a bucket, I was in a big fucking truck and bailing out little cubes of ice with my bare hands. Oh yeah, and I looked like a retard who's been told that pudding day has been cancelled.
Finally, with the ice gone, I could now just tackle the remaining soda that was pooled in the center console's recesses. For this, I would need a real rag. I looked at the seemingly abandoned gas station and discovered, to my surprise, that it was in fact a burger joint. Burgers meant a kitchen, a kitchen meant rags. I entered the place like I was having a normal day and asked if I could have a rag. Having witnessed my ordeal through his windows, the proprietor kindly gave me one. I repaid him by buying a soda (a nice sensible 20 ounce soda with a screw top lid). I returned to the vehicle and finished cleaning out the recesses as well as I could. Thirty minutes after I had spilled the soda, I was ready to hit the road.
Several miles later, I approached the intersection of 21 and 2818 only to find a sheriff's deputy blocking 21 westbound (the direction I was traveling), and diverting everyone onto 2818. I could see a MASSIVE plume of black smoke rising into the air from several miles ahead. When I got to the intersection, the deputy told me that 21 westbound was closed for a few miles but I didn't have time to ask him why. I turned down 2818, then cut across to 47, which took me back to 21 and I continued on my way to San Antonio. I was actually closer to the smoke at 47 and 21 than I had been at 2818 and 21, I think. As it turns out, this is why the road was closed: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/state&id=6940906
So, by spilling the soda, and wasting 30 minutes cleaning it up, it's possible that I may have missed driving right through the smoke as, timing wise, I believe I would have been going through that area just after the fire started but before emergency crews had responded and the roads had been cut off. However, this did not make me feel better about having spilled a soda in Todd's truck.
The rest of the drive to San Antonio went uneventfully, except for some slow traffic on I-35 in San Antonio due to some severe winds...and the fact that the exit I needed was fucking closed. WTF!?! Great, time to try to navigate a strange city in a big ass truck!
However, due to my superior ability to unfuck myself, I still managed to arrive at the machine shop despite having to rely on my own sense of direction instead of Google Map's. Once there, I backed the truck up to the shop area so that the guy helping me to load the motor could swing the motor into the bed of the truck with his swinging engine hoist (the hoist can do a 180 degree left to right swing, thus enabling the guy to take a motor from an engine stand and swing it into the back of a truck without the truck having to back up into the shop itself). The guy took a look at the racing slick and the normal tire and told me that using the slick would be problematic and that the motor would rest in the normal tire just fine. Yay, me! I got something right!
Then it starts fucking raining, AGAIN. While the motor is bagged to keep out water, the guy wants to double bag it like its his prom night with the school's easiest chick. I too think this is a good idea as the motor has to travel 170 miles in the back of a truck through bad weather and past a chemical fire. However, the guy doesn't want to get wet while doing this, so he tells me to go ahead and back the truck up until the bed is under the roof of the shop's awning. I've backed up howtizers with an army truck before, so I figure this is a piece of cake as long as he guides me back.
What I failed to realize is that there is a very good reason why the owner of the shop had the swinging engine hoist installed: it's hard as fuck to back up a big ass truck under that awning due to a weird angle and lack of space! I also failed to realize that the guy was not responsible for Todd's truck and that perhaps he was a fucking moron. So, while looking back over my shoulder at my ground guide, as is proper, I begin slowly backing the truck up, following his directions. Problem was, the guy was standing at the right rear of the truck to make sure that I didn't scrape the side of the truck against the swinging engine hoist. From there, he couldn't tell me that my left front fender was about to impact a 50-gallon drum that was sitting randomly outside their shop up against a fence. Because I had my eyes on my ground guide, LIKE I'M SUPPOSED TO, I too never saw the drum until the truck stopped moving. Sensing something wrong, I immediately stopped while the guy said, "Oh, fuck" in Spanglish. I didn't actually hear the guy say this because I couldn't hear him over the sound of the exhaust and rain. However, because I was still looking at him, I'm pretty sure I read his lips as he said, "Oh, fuck" in Spanglish. I could be wrong since I don't speak Spanglish.
The soda was bad enough, but denting Todd's truck while trying to do him a favor was catafuckingstrophic. Have you ever fucked something up that didn't belong to you AND the fuck up could have been avoided if, say, it hadn't been raining or your ground guide hadn't been a complete moron or if you had noticed a 50-fucking-gallon drum? It's a sickening feeling. I HATE not being able to be relied upon to do something without fucking it up. It's been years, imo, since I've fucked up anything this badly. I don't mind fucking up my own shit, but I can't stand it when I fuck up someone else's.
Unfuckingbelievable. If I had eaten the pizza, I would not have stopped at Sonic. If I had not stopped at Sonic, I would not have spilled the soda. If I had not spilled the soda, I wouldn't have spent 30 minutes cleaning it up. If I hadn't spent 30 minutes cleaning up the soda, I wouldn't have been diverted around the chemical fire. If I hadn't been diverted around the chemical fire, I would have arrived in San Antonio long before the rain arrived and I would not have needed to back Todd's truck up. If I hadn't had to back Todd's truck up, I wouldn't have damaged the left front fender. Lesson learned: eat the fucking pizza.
The guy sure was apologetic though, but apologies, like me, can't fix fucking dents in a friend's truck. FUCK!
While the guy and his boss, who was also apologetic and sympathetic but not enough to claim any responsibility for the accident (but I did score free t-shirts for Todd and I from him), finished loading up the now-double bagged motor into the bed of the truck, I called Todd.
"I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is: I have the motor. The bad news is: I backed up into a 50-gallon barrel and dented the front left fender of your truck." Todd was surprisingly calm about the whole thing and this worried me. Great, I had a 170 mile drive back to wonder just how pissed Todd. a former champion 4H skeet shooter, was going to be about the dent. I didn't even tell him about the spilled soda. I figured I'd better keep that one to myself for now. One thing at a time and all.
I hit the road, arriving back in town 3 hours later. Get this: they had to evacuate part of the area due to the previously mentioned chemical fire. As a result, I had to take back roads into town to avoid the chemical disaster highway closures. In addition, Todd technically lived inside the fucking evacuation zone. Fuck. That. I wasn't going to let a little thing like Ammonium Nitrate keep me from delivering Todd's truck and motor to him, not after what I had done (plus, my car was at his place). I cleverly circumnavigated some road blocks when the police weren't around and arrived at Todd's house, successfully backing the truck into his driveway without hitting anything.
Having had about 3 hours to think about the damage to his truck, he was surprisingly calm...until I told him about the spilled soda. Have you ever had someone fuck something up of yours twice? In the same day? It's hard not to get angry. Todd reached that level of anger that resembled resignation. The kind of anger you have when you think to yourself, "I KNEW I should have gone and picked up the motor myself." I felt really bad, and still do, as I slunk off to my car, vowing to meet him at his shop to help install the motor into his circle track car after I grabbed a bite to eat (not fucking Sonic, I can tell you that!).
When I rejoined Todd at the shop several hours later, he was surprisingly understanding of the whole situation although I doubt I will ever be driving his truck again. After several hours spent helping to install the motor, I am happy to report that as of 12:30 A.M. on Friday, July 31st, Todd's new motor fired up. If all goes well tomorrow night sorting out the remaining few items of car prep, he will make it down to Houston on Saturday in time for practice and qualifying before the race that night.
Oh, and if anyone wants to recommend a good and fast local body shop in the B/CS area, please let me know.
Casey Brown © 2009
"catafuckingstrophic"
ReplyDeletethat's gold, Dude!