hard work

 Tomorrow begins my mini-vacation I'll drive to the mountains my first destination. Clicking the pics will give you a clue to where I will be and what I will do. I won't be long after all it's a mini, but I'll do my best to have fun aplenty.

I had a busy day today. It didn't need to be a busy day; I wasn't paying attention, and it turned into a busy day before I knew what had happened, and suddenly, I had to do actual WORK before I knew what hit me.

I had been noticing that one of the batteries on the truck hadn't been holding its voltage like it should. One battery would be 12.5 volts, where it should be, and the other would be 12.1. A couple of days later, the good battery would still be 12.5 volts, and the low battery would be 11.9, which is not a good sign. I kept an eye on it for about a week, hoping it was me misreading my voltmeter, but the situation appeared to be getting worse, not better, so I realized that this was going to require some "work" on my part.

I bought those two batteries for the truck in Tucson, Arizona, at O'Brien's Auto Parts last year, so they weren't old at all, and like always, when I buy batteries, I keep the receipt. I hate to use a generalization like "They don't make them like they used to." But automotive batteries don't seem to last very long anymore, and I buy top-of-the-line batteries just because they're supposed to be better, but I'm having my doubts.

Fortunately, there's an O'Brien's auto parts about a mile from my daughter's house, so I schlepped my defunct battery into their store; they looked at the receipt and the age of the battery and handed me a brand-new one of the same kind for free. I've always liked O'Brien's auto parts, mostly because I see them everywhere I go, but this moved them to the top of the list of my favorite auto parts stores.

Since I was there, I figured I should get a new air filter for the truck because the one in it now is about three years old, and I drive on a lot of dusty dirt roads. I remember it being pretty expensive, somewhere around 65 bucks from O'Brien's, but I guess I shoulda bought two or three more  back then because this new one was a bit over $85.... I drove CARS while in high school, which cost less than that.

My fuel tank was low, so I filled up with diesel at $4.39 a gallon, twice what I paid when a previous president was in charge. But I figure some folks prefer giving OPEC there money instead of the American oil workers, and since it's a free country folks have that right, but it breaks my heart to see them OPEC'ers get my money instead of Americans that work in the oil industry.

I find it rather strange that oil coming from America causes global warming, but oil from other countries doesn't. Or maybe one political party will break the entire country to keep fuel prices high, just to force us into electric vehicles.... Either way it sounds un-American to me.

Installing the air filter was easy, requiring turning only one screw. But getting the batteries out and in, not so much. I had to remove a couple of brackets that are in the way of lifting out the battery, and needless to say, the batteries nowadays are either twice as heavy as they used to be, or more than likely, my muscles have been replaced with flab.

Being a four-wheel-drive, my truck sits up a little high, and lifting a truck battery shoulder-high is not as much fun as it was before I got so geezerly.

But I got it done; that's what desperation can do to a person that desperately needs a reliable vehicle. After accomplishing what amounted to an entire week's worth of work in one morning I thought I was going to settle down and take a well deserved break, but...For some strange reason, I decided to defrost the freezer in the camper. I'm not sure why that even crossed my mind other than due to an overabundance of ice I couldn't even get an ice cream sandwich in the freezer anymore.

So anyway, I got everything done and now I can relax knowing that an attack of ambition and motivation of that magnitude will not be seen again until  well into next winter.

As a closing thought I should mention that tomorrow morning, really early, I will be heading for the mountains and spend the day in Como Colorado which will be the beginning of my mini-vacation.

I will be leaving very early in order to beat some of the mountain traffic that will be converging on the High Country to see the beginning of leaf season this weekend..... None of which is the reason I'm writing this. I'm writing this to give everyone a heads up that I don't know where I will be tomorrow when it comes time to write my blog, I may have Internet, and I may not; that's the way it works in the High Country. So if you don't hear from me tomorrow, to quote General MacArthur.... "I shall return."

Theboondork