Adaptive Curmudgeon

When posted that I baked a loaf of cement I got a lot of advice.  (Including a great deal which was not recorded in text / comments but delivered in person.  The personal advice came in sentences that began with “Curmudgeon you dumbass… you should have done it like this…”  You know who you are!)

While mostly very helpful, some advice was based on the erroneous impression that I’m a helpless schmuck.  Indeed one could be forgiven for thinking I’m one of those gutless beta males who are typecast as the dad in every breakfast cereal commercial.  You know the commercials I’m talking about.  The ones where a trophy wife and a six year old laugh at the antics of a male who somehow can’t make breakfast without either setting the toaster on fire or getting heart disease?  Fortunately, that is not me.

I don’t cook but I do manufacture.  I manufacture reasonably well actually.  When it comes to manufacture of bread I’m not totally helpless.

To repeat… when necessary I can bake the living shit out of a loaf of bread.  I own it.  I dominate the bread and make it do my bidding.  Does this mean I can make flan?  No.  If I want flan I’ll damn well buy it.  (Or possibly invade the country where it comes from.)

I just wanted to make the point that I can venture into the kitchen without getting the vapors from accumulated estrogen.  In fact I’ll refer to my series I like to call “bread baking advice for men and creatures that think like them“.  This series was based on bread that had nothing to do with a bread machine.  (I started with wheat berries and went from there… is that not the full Monty?)

• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread 0: Class Prerequisite
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread I: Motivation
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread II: Workspace
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread III: Equipment
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread IV: Consumables
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread V: Flour
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread VI: Mixin’ Stuff
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread VII: Paydirt
• Curmudgeonly Cooking: Bread VIII: Tips

Behold what I have wrought!

That was then and this is now.  The task at hand had to do with the use of purchased bread mix and whether I could combine it with my trusty bread machine to make bread with slightly less effort than breathing.  Experiment one in that vein was a failure.  Stay tuned for experiment two, the bread race.

You may recall that I had a potential “bad bread event“.  I hadn’t posted the results (which we’re still in play at the time).  In the interest of full disclosure I offer my update:

Behold! I have made wheat into Portland cement!

At the time, it appeared that the bread machine had completed it’s cycle.  Clearly I was wrong.  The bread didn’t properly rise.  (Note: it tasted surprisingly good for a brick.  In the event of a zombie apocalypse I’d be happily munching on it without complaint.  Life is all about compromise.)

Nor was I upset it didn’t work.  One does not scale the peaks of culinary manufacture (I do not “cook” I “manufacture”) without a few failures and the theory I’d been working on was “fuck it… let’s see what happens” (a direct quote).

My real concern was the machine which is cheaper than a wood splitter but no less loved.  It seemed none the worse for wear.  Huzzah!  I cleaned the bread machine and tossed the brick to the chickens.  (Here’s a note: chickens will devour a two pound loaf of rock in less time than you think.  Those little bastards are land piranhas!)

Unlike politicians, I can learn.  If attempt one went down in flames that means nothing!  Nothing I say!  Attempt two shall be better, faster, stronger.

I have decided to try a bread race.  I’m going to bake another loaf using the mix I’ve bought but resort to hands on work and the oven (which is tragically unautomated).  This will be in direct competition with a loaf based on cheap store bought flour in my trusty bread machine.

Remember, this is not about making the best bread, it’s about controlling labor inputs while producing something that’s “good enough”.  Also competition makes us stronger.  (Cue the theme from Rocky!)

Stay tuned.

I love bread makers.  I use ’em hard and tend to wear them out.  (Like many things bread machines are built shitty and cheap… I think most of them get used only rarely.)

Usually I mill my own flour from grain (huzzah!) but sometimes I get lazy.  Recently I bought  “Honey Wheat Bread And Roll Mix” from Provident Pantry.  (A company that’s usually excellent.)  I intended it as a shortcut for making bread in my machine.

The instructions had no provision for bread makers.  Their usually excellent and informative web site doesn’t even admit that bread makers exist.  I called their info hotline and got a well informed young man who almost died when I asked about break machine use.  Seriously, he almost crawled out of the phone trying to avoid saying anything about bread machines or their alleged utility for theoretically making bread should such a question arise in some other dimension or hypothetical parallel universe.

Am I missing something?  Are bread machines the mark of evil in Mormon philosophy?  Is there not one overworked suburban mom in all of Utah who doesn’t have two hours to screw around kneading?  Dammit I know they’ve got electricity.  Why not **&%$% appliances?  (If he’d said, the “stuff we sold you won’t work with a bread machine and don’t even try” that would have been a straightforward and acceptable answer.)

Anyway I just applied the “fuck it… let’s see what happens” approach.  I measured the stuff according to hand kneading recipe and dumped it in the machine.  Twenty minutes later I came back to hear my machine’s motor making irregular sounds.  The bread dough looked just right but the little motor was having trouble mixing the dough?  Maybe it’s thicker than usual recipes?

If my bread machine dies I’m gonna’ be bummed out.  I don’t buy appliances lightly and they’re not cheap and trendy like they used to be.  (Sometimes you can find them used but the supply is dwindling and half the time they’re missing the pan or the little plastic paddle.)

I added more water and it spun freely… making what appeared to be glue.  Is this good or bad?

Then I added some flour and the glue turned into wet cement.  This can’t be good?

Shit!

Right now the machine is on pause while it goes through a “rise” cycle.  I’m not sure where this experiment is going.  Could be good bread.  Could be a blown motor.

Wish me luck.

I have been informed that the object that did such an excellent job trashing my thumb (or at least setting the stage for mayhem) is a “quicklink”.

Do not turn your back on this object.

Looks innocent doesn’t it?  Hardly any rust right?

I’m going to hurl it into the sea.  You can never be too careful with malevolent objects.

I’ve been “fighting” a cold. (“Fighting” being a euphemism for “getting my ass kicked”.)

Like all red blooded men, I approached the situation with denial. It’s in the guy manual. “Bah! I’m not that bad. A half gallon of coffee and a little mental grit and I’ll be fine.” We all think we’re John Wayne.

Thus, for a variety of unrelated reasons I was underneath my truck, far from home, hooking up a chain in a rain shower. Any sane person in similar condition would be in bed enduring daytime TV. I hate TV!

I’m not sure what you call them; the single chain link with a screw type connector? I had one that was rusted, bent, and reticent. The work of the devil! Generally I take a 9/16” open end wrench and the thing squeaks open just fine. This time wasn’t so simple. No go. The damn thing hung there on the undercarriage as if to say “Nice try bubba but you’re fucked.” I did what all red blooded men do in such a situation; I went back to the tool box and resorted to the ultimate bail out tool. Vice grips!

Frankly vice grips are a monstrosity and the world would be better off without them. Except they handle situations that are even worse than the ones they cause. I cranked the grips down, locked ’em tight and prepared to reef my back outta’ whack.

Then I paused. Was there a better way? I pondered a bit. Nope. It was brute force time.

On second thought I decided gloves were in order. I rooted around in the truck cab and put on some beefy leather gloves in the interest of safety. If you’re going to go for it you might as well go all the way.

Crank. Sqeaaaaallll. A ha! Five degrees of progress.

I reset the grips. Leaned into it. Crank. Squealllll. I was rewarded with more progress.

You know what’s coming next don’t you?

Crank. Slip. BANG!

The grips had torn off some of the cheap pot metal crap they’d used to make the link. In utterly predictable kinetic mayhem my thumb had smashed solidly into the undercarriage.

Ouch! It hurt like hell.

Normally I’d swear and cuss and roll around like a gut shot lizard. Not this time. I sat up cross legged underneath the tailgate and carefully inspected the digit. Still there. Hurting like hell. My thoughts were more curious than usual. Why wasn’t I flopping around like a fish? After all, the pain was immense. I’m not that tough.

All I could think was “gee whiz, how fortunate I am that I put on gloves.”

“Gee whiz?” What the hell was that?

It was probably the cold.

I took a deep breath. I felt a bit tight around the ribs. Dredging in my memory I counted the days since I’d had a good night’s sleep. More days than I’d like to admit. I pondered my head. It weighed what felt like thirty pounds. Plus there was the final evidence, my thumb hurt like white hot needles had been shoved in it and all I could think was “Gee whiz”.

Hmmm… pneumonia? Nah. Bronchitis? Probably.

The “cold” I’d been ignoring must be a lot nastier than I’d allowed myself to admit. I tossed my tools in the back of the truck, slammed the tailgate shut, shook my head a bit to clear it, and consulted my map. I was 40-50 miles from the nearest town.

Well that’s that. I fired up the engine and headed off. An hour later I was being ignored by a receptionist. Fifteen minutes after that a radiologist subbing for a nurse screwed up my blood pressure cuff and practically cut my arm off. Ten minutes after that a bored but very competent doctor from somewhere foreign easily diagnosed bronchitis. Perhaps “confirmed” is the better word since the thumb had already told me everything I needed to know. Then came a pharmacist assistant who wasn’t nearly hot enough to make up for the fact that she was incompetent and is sooner or later gonna’ kill someone. Then a pharmacist who was spot on and pleasant fixed everything.

Antibiotics! God bless antibiotics because without them we’d all die young and in misery!

I feel a thousand times better. Which is to say that you can’t truly appreciate how great it is to feel “bad” until the feeling of “incredibly bad” has been alleviated.

As for the link? After I got my drugs at the pharmacy I drove across the street to a hardware store where I got bigger vice grips and a new replacement stainless steel link. I crawled under the truck and bent the old rusted son of a bitch off! That’s right. I replaced it with a new link right there in the parking lot and the universe is back in balance again. Why? Because that’s what men do!

Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Curmudgeon says I have to go to bed or she’s going to kick my ass. If I get out of bed again I definitely deserve it.

“Portland is where the young go to retire.”

I’m traveling in the Pacific Northwest.  Pray for me!

The “weird Portland effect” isn’t news.  I’ve been here before.  I spent several years getting rained on amid the socialists and tall trees.  I did my time.  I paid my debt to society.  I have since escaped to flyover country.  My homestead’s location is my version of heaven and their version of hell; I’m happy I left, presumably they’re happy I’m gone.

Back when I lived west of the Cascades, my thinking was “yes it’s weird here but then again there’s nothing wrong with a little idiosyncrasy”.  I accepted it but never got used to it.  Maybe I should have been stoned?  Silly me!

I was a social outlier but it wasn’t that bad.  One eventually accepts the idea that being straight, married, employed, and not actively worshiping Cesar Chavez makes you “not one of the cool kids”.  Unfortunately, and this was what really doomed me, I had an unshakable innate desire to pay off student loans and support myself.  It was a malady the the locals could never exorcise from me (they sure tried).

Eventually I moved to drier climes (which is just about anywhere on earth).  Having neither “gone Galt” nor “gone trustfund” I chose to seek money (or rather jobs… which may confuse Portlanders as they see little correlation between the two).  An economy based on mountain bikes and coffee wasn’t doing it for me.

After leaving I gradually realized that all that rain really had hammered my attitude.  The sun came out and my spirits soared.  My boots finally dried out and stopped smelling like mold.  I could ride a bicycle without a raincoat.  I could drive a truck without feeling like it was fueled with the bones of baby seals.  I could put a bicycle in the back of the truck and drive it around while listening to heavy metal instead of lute and eating beef jerky instead of slimy yogurt.  I could wear Carhartts non-ironically.  I could walk past a smoker without feeling social pressure to be a dick to them.  God bless America I was free again!  Dinner became about food instead of a hand wringing exploration of GMOs and localvores.  Have you noticed that they’re all skinny?  I’d be skinny too if I lived in a world without bacon… and joy.

A dismal gray depression had flowed over me so stealthily that I’d hardly noticed it’s arrival.  A few months after fleeing the constant rain and Marxism it had fully lifted off my shoulders and was gone.  Who knows how long or how deeply the rain had seeped into my bones?  All I knew is that I felt as light as a feather.  I knew it was gone when I stopped wondering why everyone thought tofu was food.  Perhaps it takes a lot of rain to make tofu appear to taste good and bacon to taste like murder?

I visit from time to time.  I prepare like it’s a visit to Warsaw in 1950.  I pack plenty of rain gear, never stay longer than necessary, and make damn sure I’ve got my escape route clearly in mind.  I say “hi” to the tall Douglas-fir (I do miss them) and check to see that the Pacific is properly situated where I left it.  I love watching the waves.  They’re entrancing.  You’ve got to keep an eye out though.  Sometimes a rogue wave will rise up and suck an inattentive fool into the undertow.  You can be drunk while on the beach but never turn your back on the Pacific.  Then, after a few beers and some salmon, I get the hell outta’ Dodge.

Today I had to venture back across the “moss barrier to reality”.  I was “forced” to drive through Portland en route to a classified location to do something that was none of your business.

I’d been looking forward to some of the highlights; Powells City of Books for example.  However, it’s 2013 and the magic is gone from buying books in a place.  A big honking used book store used to be a repository of awesome.  Now it’s a anachronism.  The whole thing could be replaced by a handful of websites and ten bucks in a PayPal account.  I can get the sum total of human knowledge delivered via FedEx to my remote homestead (and probably a third of it could be beamed to my Kindle at two am during a blizzard).  Bookstores are cool in the way that I think a blacksmith exhibit at the farmer’s museum is cool.  Nothing more.

What did Powells have to offer but parking hassles and nearby locations where I could pay a 500% mark up on burnt coffee.  I rocketed through.  My truck, which views bicycle lanes and trustfunders with suspicion, thought I’d made a sound decision.

At the gas station I had to let someone else put their dirty hippie hands on my truck!  Oregonians are by statute determined to be too incompetent to pump their own gas.  Imagine a place even more restrictive than California!  I’m pretty sure that George Washington would mount bayonets and charge had he been in my place.

By chance the truck happened to be empty.  Imagine the fun I had when I pulled up with a one ton dually and carefully loaded two six packs of beer in a payload area that could tow a house.  The guy pumping, who’s life savings is worth less than my fly rod, could barely contain his disgust.  Yep, a guy pumping diesel who hates diesel.  He’ll probably go home and write a poem about me.

The Pacific ocean appears unaffected by the weirdness.  Thank goodness!  The waves were as beautify as ever.  I had to walk past four unused electric car charging stations and a bulletin board of protest posters to get there but that’s ok.  The beer was as excellent as always.  It was served by a forty year old white guy with Rastafarian hair and the far off look of a man who’ll never pay off his student loans in this century but hey, that’s not my problem.  In the end it was like being an adult in a theme park.

I’m happy knowing that I can pull the rip cord and in a few hours be safely across the divide.  I’ll be back where coyotes and real men still roam free.  I can see my truck from where I’m sitting.  So long as I’ve got a full tank of fuel (try buying fuel on a Sunday in Oregon!) and I’m not impoverished like I was when I lived there I’ve got my golden ticket out.

In case you’re thinking I’m exaggerating.  That Portland is no more freaky than say, Des Moines…  I’ll provide two examples.  The first came about while talking with a waitress.  She mentioned some ethics kerfluffle involving Portland and a New Jersey politician.  I checked it out.  Here it is:

“It’s America’s most famous vegan strip club, thanks to Cory Booker. Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s Twitter flirtation with a stripper has cast a spotlight on Casa Diablo in Portland, Ore., a city with proud traditions of both veganism and X-rated entertainment.”

Folks I’m here to tell you that I’m entirely used to New Jersey politicians acting like… well like politicians from New Jersey.  Did any of my readers honestly ever expect there is such a thing as a vegan strip club?  Is this really a pressing need that society must fill?  Why?  If you’re the kind of man that’ll pay good money watching a naked woman on stage but it crosses your mind to ask whether her sexy boots are leather or vinyl… hand in your balls right now.  They’re defective.  Or, you might just be a resident of Portland.

While checking out the vegan strip club quandary I crossed paths with Exhibit B.  Exhibit B is a video of a man dressed in a kilt and Darth Vader outfit, on a unicycle, playing bagpipes, that shoot flames.  I’m not one to discount the imaginative of humanity.  This is truly something unique.  Only Portland would create such an entity.  Which is why I never turn my back on either the Pacific or Portland.

First of all let me start by saying that it sucks whenever anyone who is willing and able to work gets sent home through no fault of their own.  Bob Smith who does accounting at the WallaWalla Department of Agricultural Whatnottery, Region 15, Secition 9, is neither the cause of nor the controller of Governmental tectonic shifts.  Don’t dump on the guy.  Save your vitriol for the suits that endeavor to drive the beast.  (Or you can dump on the ones who do the truly repugnant as a main parcel of their job duties, like the TSA’s serial gropers.  Ironically, a service deemed “essential”.)

Also let me say that no man is an island.  The shutdown has seriously hosed my homestead’s finances.  It makes me wish I was as isolationist as my Amish neighbors.  (Then again I like beer and swearing so that would never work.  Also I could rock an Amish beard but Mrs. Curmudgeon vetoed the idea.)  Taking a financial hit sucks; especially when it comes from external forces.

Finally let me say that things that suck happen all the time and… well that sucks too.

Now lets get to the point.

1. This has happened before.
2. It will happen again.
3. For many people it sucks when it happens; which has no bearing whatsoever on #1 or #2.

Here’s another concept.  Everyone seems to be concerned with which party will be blamed for the shutdown.  There appears to be a tacit understanding that blame is certain and credit is impossible.  (This is, of course, another example of our unbiased press at work.)

I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that blame and causality are more or less unrelated.  Meaning it’s one thing to foment a shutdown and another thing to get blamed for it and the two may or may not be related.  At the moment I can’t turn on my truck’s radio without Pravda NPR whining that this is caused by gruesome illiterate hillbilly tea partiers in flyover country who are too stupid to submit to the better judgment of their intellectual superiors.  Apparently it’s totally inconceivable that it could be caused by scarcity of resources.  In some circles, nothing from the rising of the sun to the death of a songbird happens on this earth without one of two parties to be blamed or lauded.

I disagree.  Sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  In those cases either one viewpoint crushes the other or a compromise is reached.  So far neither party can crush the other and as yet there is no compromise.  Just as it takes two to Tango, it takes at least one of them to not Tango and neither party seems to be immune to shutdowns on their watch.  Historically each party has had their hands on the reins during shutdowns.  I’m not the only one saying as much.  Here’s a quote from Charles C. W. Cooke (link goes to his article):

“Of the 17 shutdowns in America’s history, Democrats controlled the House during 15 and had charge of both chambers during eight. Five shutdowns happened under unified government! This makes sense. Government shutdowns are caused by legitimate and welcome disagreement between equal branches. They are certainly more likely to happen in divided government, but it is not a prerequisite.”

Then just to get a sense of how normal or abnormal our current budgetary kerfluffle might be I’m putting up a little table I found at NBC News.  (Note: The formatting is a bit dodgy and I’m too lazy to fix it.  Click on the link to see it better.  You should be clicking the occasional link anyway.  How else would you know I’m not inventing it from whole cloth?  The press, of course, is apparently immune to that last admonition.)

PAST FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS

Year        Beginning date            Length in Days     Ending date
(at midnight)

1976        Thursday, Sept 30        10                         Monday, Oct 11

1977        Friday, Sept 30             12                         Thursday, Oct 13
Monday, Oct 31              8                         Wednesday, Nov 9
Wednesday, Nov 30       8                         Friday, Dec 9

1978        Saturday, Sept 30         17                        Wednesday, Oct18

1979        Sunday, Sept 30            11                        Friday, Oct 12

1981        Friday, Nov 20                 2                        Monday, Nov 23

1982        Thursday, Sept 30           1                        Saturday, Oct 2
Friday, Dec 17                 3                        Tuesday, Dec 21

1983        Thursday, Nov 10            3                        Monday, Nov 14

1984        Sunday, Sept 30             2                        Wednesday, Oct 3
Wednesday, Oct 3          1                        Friday, Oct 5

1986        Thursday, Oct 16            1                        Saturday, Oct 18

1987        Friday, Dec 18                1                         Sunday, Dec 20

1990        Friday, Oct 5                   3                         Tuesday, Oct 9

1995        Monday, Nov 13             5                         Sunday, Nov 19
Friday, Dec 15                21                 Saturday, Jan 6, 1996

Do you see what I see? I see a more or less steady series of shutdowns on a periodic cycle of one to five years.  Seventeen shutdowns in all.  This, the eighteenth shutdown, is notable not for existing but coming some 18 years behind schedule.

Shutdowns aren’t good management but they’re not the apocalypse either.

Now we came across another problem.  How many bundles per pallet?  The Bobcat could lift no more than 15 bundles at a time.  I needed to return home with Z bundles.  The trailer could hold X pallets.  I’d already loaded 15 bundles in the truck bed.

Remember those word problems you hated when you were in school.  We suck it up buttercup because that shit’s for real!  I figured out a basic equation in seconds.  Each pallet should have (Z-15)/X.  Also X<= 15.  This was trivial… except standing in the heat with two guys staring at me I couldn’t do the math in my head.  They both whipped out iPhones and plugged in numbers.

One guy got an answer.  He called it out.  The other guy looked up from his iDevice and agreed.  I wrinkled my nose and thought hard.

His number times X plus 15 equaled something totally unlike Z… except I wasn’t sure what it was.  I could simply tell that he’d missed by an amount we technically term “a shitload”.  Presumably he’d dropped a decimal place… or failed algebra.

“You’re wrong.”  I said.  He blinked.  The forklift guy blinked.

I sighed… what do they teach in schools?  Is this not their job?  They stood there with jaws open and iPhones poised but no thoughts behind what, if anything, they should key into their electronic security blanket.  It took me a bit for me to work the numbers in my head.  (Note to self; next time bring a pad and paper.)  The kid eventually gave up and checked Facebook.  The older guy was digging in his pocket for Skoal.

Finally I derived the answer.  They both immediately agreed.  Awesome!

Then I realized they would both agree to any number of any sort that might mention.  I tested the idea… “What if we loaded,” and here I spit out a random number, “per pallet?”  They both agreed instantly.

When I make observations like this I know why America’s national debt is so large.

On the other hand I was happy to be doing actual math.  Having escaped “carpentry-math” my world was once again filled with sunshine.  Meanwhile the two guys were throwing bundles like gerbils on a wheel.

“You think the trailer can handle it?”  I asked.  They froze.  I understood, belatedly, that the delivery truck is such a big flatbed that the shingles for a single house can’t exceed it’s payload.  These guys had probably never pondered the concept of “mass”.  I was on my own.  For all I knew they might even own a Prius and enjoy yoga.  I shudder to ponder it.

(In retrospect they also seemed a bit confused about why I wanted the pallets balanced in certain locations near the axle rather than fore and aft willy nilly.  The last American to stand on the moon took his trip in 1972.  Since then we’ve created Facebook, microwaves, and several generations of idiots who can’t balance a payload.  I’d trade a herd of iPhone wielding morons for a hearty fellow from 1950 with a sliderule and a taste for Tang.)

I looked at the shingles.  On the wrapper it said a “square” weighed a certain amount.  OK so X bundles per pallet, Y pallets, 3 bundles per “square”,  Z pounds per “square”.  So that’s ((X*Y) / 3)*Z.

I was saying this aloud. The two guys were watching me like it was performance art.

I ignored them.  Figure 1,000 pounds for the trailer.  Oh and 15 bundles on the truck.  That’s ((X*Y)/3 * Z) + 1,000 + (15 / 3)* Z for the whole shebang.

A fourth guy had showed up and was listening.  I ignored the group of four and glanced at the hitch.  “And that’s a 2″ ball so that’s a 6,000 pound limit.  And the truck’s GVWR is about…”  For some reason I remember my truck’s GVWR even though I can’t remember my wife’s cell phone number.  (But I sure as hell remember our anniversary… for some things there are consequences!)

The four guys were in awe.  They waited.  I came to a conclusion.

“It’s a go.”  The trailer was laden close to the hitches limit but not over it.  (Good thing I’d put the first 15 bundles on the truck itself. )  Also the trailer would implode long before I overloaded the truck’s overall capacity.  I was pleased to KNOW I was within specs rather than the last trip when we’d merely HOPED it was so.

They all breathed a sigh of relief and pocketed the Skoal and iPhones that had appeared in their hands again.

Twenty minutes later the truck was loaded, the trailer was loaded, and I was driving out of the yard.  The guy at the yard gate had to count the bundles three times before he was confident I had the right amount.  I never left the cab.  I couldn’t stop smiling.

I was smiling because I was a man towing a hefty payload with a good truck; as God intended.  Also, I got to use some of my truck’s more awesome (and expensive) gadgets.  I slipped the transmission into tow/haul.  (Have you ever tried to find a used truck with a manual… it’s impossible!)  My truck’s auto is so good that it’s slowly converting me to the dark side.  Then I turned the jake brake on.  I had a pretty hefty load and that’s precisely why I have a jake.  Finally I glued an eye to my exhaust gas temp gauge because the truck was about to do some serious work.

Pistons fired, EGT gauges climbed, and huge torque numbers came into play.  Heralded by trumpets (at least in my head) I rolled forward.  I was at the helm of one of the peak developments of the industrial revolution.  Have I mentioned that I love my truck?

The whole world was roses.  I climbed a hill… slow and steady and accelerating.  I dropped a gear.  The EGT cooled instantly.  I cruised past a crappy little econobox laboring up the hill while the driver chattered on a cell phone.  He was probably hypermiling on the way to the organic food co-op.  I was passed by a bobblehead in a SUV with a phone glued to her mountainous blond hair.  What could she possibly have to say?  Was she talking to the guy in the econobox?

Who cares?  My truck was running great and that’s all that mattered.  By the way.  Truck… I love it.  Just in case you missed it.

In a fit of overconfidence, I rolled the whole thing into a Burger King drive through.  I slipped up to the window (trailer and all), got my Whopper, and was back on the road in ten minutes.

Back on the road I had no troubles.  The trip was too short.  The joy of towing gave way to the drudgery of moving bundles by the ton.

A few hours later the trailer was unloaded by a very overworked Bobcat and I was sitting on my porch drinking beer.  The sun set over a mountain of stacked shingles on my lawn.  A job well done.

Home improvement, it’s not for wimps.

Now I had to return to get the remaining 2/3 of the shipment.  I decided to take the mighty Curmudgeon Truck (which is a 1 ton dually).  I had visions of my friend’s 3/4 ton truck breaking in half.  Besides he’d been steering it mostly by hope and I couldn’t bear taking another ride loaded like that.  He didn’t complain when I suggested the switch.

I glanced at the Pony trailer but immediately rejected that idea.  The Little Pony trailer would hemorrhage just looking at those heavy shingles.

I hitched up his car trailer to my truck and removed my tailgate.  I left my him at the house.  “I got this” I said and then zoomed off.  We must face our fates alone.

I was confident.  I have more or less the biggest truck you can buy without getting a commercial driver’s license and trying to cram a Peterbuilt in the garage.  I stroked the truck’s dash.

“You were born for this.”  I assured the beast. “It is time to shine.”  The mighty diesel engine was running smooth and cool.  I love my truck.  My truck loves me.  (The dog gets honorable mention but you can’t haul lumber on a dog.)

Back at the lumber yard I unhitched the trailer.  I planned to put the first pallet on the truck itself.  The yoyo that had almost killed the Honda SUV an hour earlier swooped over with his forklift.

“Nice truck.”  He beamed “want me to load it.”  I considered hitting him with a rock, hiding the body, and running the forklift myself.

I warned the kid in the forklift that my truck was not any truck.

“There are many trucks”, I looked him in the eye, “but this one is mine”.  He shivered.

I radiated menace.  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He gulped and nodded.

“Are you sure?”  I asked.  “Nobody will think less of you if you back out.”  I added.  By offering him the chance to bail out I felt he’d volunteered for whatever came next.  Should he damage my truck I’d feel morally justified dismembering him with a tire iron.  (In certain states I believe this is actually written into law under the “he messed with my truck” clause.)

Have I mentioned that I like my truck?  It is said that a grizzly bear mother is dangerous when separated from her cub.  This is ridiculous.  Grizzly bears have never made a truck payment.

He wanted to do it.  Brave?  Stupid?  Regardless, he had been warned.

I manually unloaded a tall pallet down to 15 bundles.  (Have I mentioned that “bundles” are not “squares” but rather 1/3 of a “square” and a “square” will cover some number that is not 100 square feet but more than 15 of them will tip a Bobcat at an angle reminiscent of the Tango?  Every time I mention the ‘logic’ behind construction units butterflies get cancer and Satan divides by zero.)

To my surprise he loaded the truck gently as a feather floating on the breeze.  Which is good.  After all, his life depended on it.

Then I rehitched the trailer and started loading more pallets with bundles.  The forklift kid helped.  A third guy showed up too.  We were slinging shingles like the macho men in the backdrop of a truck commercial.  In fact, I was humming the theme from a truck advertisement… oddly not from my brand.  Does that make me disloyal?

More in Part V.