Lost and Found

I have lots of data.

I was fumbling my way through the archives, looking for an old VST plugin, when I happened across a file named “Fort Wayne Chronicles.TXT”

I had nearly forgotten this tale until I read this. I shouldn’t have forgotten it. I should remember it every time I use my giant Craftsman floor jack or jack stands. I don’t remember how long ago this was. Best guess, it was somewhere around 2000 – 2002, since I was driving the ’86 Suburban. In fact, this was likely the event that caused the eventual failure of my wheel bearing, thus ending the reign of the Urban Assault Vehicle. It was the tale of a time that I drove out to Fort Wayne to visit Phil and go see Sunny Taylor play a show at Mad Anthony’s, and instead ended up spending the weekend changing a tire.

My weekend was NUTS! I went out to Ft. Wayne to see a band that I’ve been wanting to see for months now. They were playing Saturday night at a place not more than 6 or 7 blocks from my friend Phil’s apartment. I picked him up a little late, but we were only going to miss a few minutes of the act. We pulled into the parking lot, and I heard a lout banging noise. I didn’t think much of it, as I always hear loud banging noises in the truck. We pulled into a parking space, and when Phil opened his door, I heard a hissing noise. Bad… Very bad… My right rear tire had blown. I said fuck it, we’ll fix it after the band plays. We walk into the bar, and it’s quiet. There’s no band! They cancelled at the last minute. Fuck it, lets get a drink. I had a few beers, and then decided I’d better fix the flat before drinking any more. We went outside, only to discover that I didn’t have a lug-nut wrench. We found a dude in the bar that had one, so he let us borrow it. Then we couldn’t get the lug nuts loose. I was standing on the wrench – no, I was jumping on the wrench. Still, they wouldn’t budge. We finally got one loose, and proceeded to do the same thing on the other 4. It took us about an hour to get the lug nuts off. In the mean time, the guy that owned the wrench told us to keep it, and he left! Its a good thing, too, because by the time we were done jumping on it, it had become so twisted and bent out of shape, that it looked like a damned pretzel! After all the lug nuts were removed, we then tried to remove the tire from the axle. It didn’t work. It was seized up so tight, that no matter how hard we kicked at it, it wouldn’t budge. Not even a little! We walked back to his apartment, and got his car, drove to Meijer and bought a huge pry-bar and a new lug-nut wrench), and headed back out. Even with the prybar, we couldn’t get the tire off! I was bending the shit out of the axle, and the damned rim just wouldn’t pop off. We worked at it until about 1:30am, and finally decided to call it quits for the night. We went back out there Sunday morning, and unfortunately, it hadn’t spontaneously fallen off during the night. We then went to Sears, and bought a few items, including another prybar, 2 cans of WD-40 and a 3 ½ ton hydraulic floor jack. (By this time, I was disgusted with the factory screw jack.) I drenched that thing in oil, and pried until my arms hurt, and we still couldn’t get the damned wheel off! Finally, I got a brainstorm. I borrowed the scissor jack from Phil’s car, and wedged it in between the frame and the wheel rim. I had to crank that thing so hard that it bent the shit out of my rim. Finally, in one huge explosion, the rim went flying one direction, the jack flew another direction, and luckily, none of my fingers went flying anywhere! (The first thing I did was count them all!) Then we put on the spare, and drove away. But that is the first time in history, that it has taken me 19 hours and almost $200 to change a flat tire!

Dave, weren’t you supposed to…

Yes. Yes I was supposed to do a lot of things. Like keep my site more up to date than this for starters. Oh, and run a marathon a couple months ago. My goal of running a marathon had to get postponed until 2015 for medical reasons. My lack of site updates… well I have no good excuse. That’s just plain laziness.

However in an attempt to not appear to be a total looser, here are some things that  I have accomplished in the past 4 months (in no particular order)

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Yellow Lines Down the Middle

Yellow Lines in the Middle

I tried explaining to her that the yellow lines in the parking lot should be on either side of your car when you’re done parking. My efforts were in vain. Finally I decided to heed the old adage, If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The Year So Far

I could sum it all up in one word. Cold. But that’s not very interesting, so I’ll think of a few other words to add to it.

The year started off with a bang! Well more accurately, last year ended with a bang. Fortunately, (after a 2nd trip to the body shop) the damage has been repaired and my truck has been restored to it’s former glory. I had my truck repaired at Riverdale Body Shop in Schererville. According to their website, their repair process involves disassembling the affected area and determining if there is any “hidden damage.” Well, they didn’t do that. When I picked it up the first time, I got about 100 yards down route 41 before I noticed that the alignment was still off. Hmmm…. the impact tore out the fender liner and obviously hit the front wheel. Why on earth would they have thought to check the alignment? I called them right away, but was told that they’d have to call me back to schedule the alignment. I was disappointed to say the least that they would have missed something so obvious. At least the cosmetic work was done well.


Training for the Chicago Marathon continues Continue reading

File this under “Things That Would Have Been Good to Know Earlier”

wpid-20131231_085906.jpg

Apparently, I should have selected a alternate route.

To add insult to injury, I can’t get my damned accident report from the Schererville PD today because the records department is closed for the holidays.

I can see a news helicopter hovering overhead. If you watch closely, you might see my busted suburban on tv.

What a shitty end to the year. Fuck today. I’m ready for a drink.

Pro Tip #9

No matter how tempting it may be, do not drive underneath a moving Suburban. Not only will it cause undue stress and monetary obligations for the driver of the Suburban, but you may become seriously if not fatally injured yourself. You have been warned.

So… as much as this pro tip sounds like common sense, it was a bit of advice that a young girl could have used prior to attempting to drive under my truck last night. Another bit of common sense would be not to run red lights. Either one would have saved us both a lot of trouble and money.

I was travelling east on RT 30 and the dim-witted antagonist was driving west on RT 30, attempting to turn south onto RT 41. The red light shining down on her car must have gone unnoticed, because before I knew what the hell was going on, this car flew up under my left front tire! It takes an awful lot of force to launch the front end of a 6 thousand pound truck into the air. As for the other car, lets just say it’s hood looked like a 6 thousand pound truck drove over it.

Dec 2013 Suburban DamageThere were no injuries, fortunately. As my friend Steve once said, “stupid should hurt more.” but in this case it didn’t. No, the only casualties were 2 vehicles and the other driver’s underwear.

Come Monday morning, I need to have a sitdown with my insurance agent and figure out how to proceed from here, and to find out how much this dipshit’s negligence is going to raise my insurance rates.

Long Overdue Update

Ironic, isn’t it? The more things happen and the more things I should be posting on here, the less time I have to do it. So what’s happened since the ringing in of the new year? I’m sure I’ll forget something but here goes anyway:
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Pro Tip #7

100 MPHScenario: You’re in a hurry to get to work. You’ve decided to throw caution and fuel economy to the wind in an effort to reduce the impact of your tardiness. You are cruising past cars on the expressway like they are standing still. Suddenly, that gleeful feeling of acceleration dissipates and you suddenly feel as though there is something wrong with your truck.

There is nothing wrong malfunctioning on your vehicle. It is operating as General Motors intended. They have decided for you, that you don’t need to drive faster than 100 MPH.

… I disagree.

I’ve already priced out a programmer to remove that restriction. Oh yes… it will be mine.

Seriously Thirsty

So I filled the gas tank on my truck for the first time yesterday. I discovered 3 things while attempting to fill a bottomless pit with fuel:

Compu-burban says I’ll get 500+ miles out of a single tank!

  1. My truck has the optional 31 gallon tank instead of the standard 26 gallon tank.
  2. The gas pump stops you at $90 and makes you put your credit card in again, as if to say: “Hey, we think your tank has a big hole in it and it’s just pouring this stuff out on the ground.”
  3. It costs $107 and change to fill it at current prices. (No, I don’t remember the price. I stopped looking long ago and I’m a much happier person for it. Oh, and I’m too lazy to do the math to figure out an estimate.)

The good news is, now I can drive to our plant in Pennsylvania, drive around for a week and not have to gas up until I’m already on my way home.

Stolen Truck Recovered!

2010 Chevy Suburban LTOkay, so it wasn’t really stolen because it technically wasn’t mine yet… but now it is! As of 9:30pm last night, I am the proud owner of a 2010 Chevrolet Suburban LT! I would have taken a picture last night, but it was so foggy and this truck is so long that a picture of the front wouldn’t have shown the back and vice versa.
Oh it feels good to drive a truck this big again! Jenn is jealous because it has a remote starter. The boys are happy because it has a DVD player. I’m happy because it has mirrors, a working 4 wheel drive, and the steering wheel doesn’t make strange squeaky-balloon sounds when you turn. You’d have to have seen my Cherokee lately to really appreciate that last bit. Speaking of the Cherokee, they gave me $500 for that beat-to-shit conveyance! I was prepared to take anything over $300 for it, so that was a bonus!

Now to make sure I know where all the nearest gas stations are…