long...soul searching exhalation of breath...(complete with pensive expression on kisser...) Sometimes, it just don't pay to get outta bed. Case in point, Saturday morning. After waking up and finding out that somebody besides me had won that big ol' lottery (three somebodys) Tim and I started moving things around the yard to, one get his Camaro unloaded from the trailer and back in his temp controlled shop and, two, to get Peggy out of her rolling barn so I could finish getting the wounded chunk of cast iron out of the frame rails. That particular task went by pretty unremarkably... but then we needed to get my rolling chassis Back in the barn.
Tim fired up his four wheeler and pulled up to the back bumper of Peggy. He loudly asked..."You Ready? I replied..."Yeah...Go ahead." He asked again..."Are you SURE your Ready??" I replied..."Hit It".
The concept was to push Peggy into the barn with the four wheeler, so we didn't have to hand push uphill on the ramp door of the trailer...and it worked...sorta. Tim had put the four wheeler in four wheel drive and when I said Hit It...he Did. Wide Open! Those knobby tires, front and rear, pawed at that broom finished concrete like a raging bull...the engine rpm's climbing pretty impressively and Peggy was headed back in the barn...then there was a sudden and very loud...WHAMM!!! and all I could see was stars. Tim agitatedly shouted the question..."What the *^*% did You HIT!!??" Turns out..."I" didn't hit anything...Peggy's headers (that I had zip tied up to the chassis and those small zip ties failed) had dropped down and ran into the ramp door of the trailer, thus haulting any and all forward motion. The next thing I knew, I had jumped out of the driver's side to see what had happened, and had to pick a quickly leaking torque converter off the ramp door. (Great...trans fluid everywhere...) Then I noticed what had happened...Both headers are now equipped with crushed, collapsed, krinkled and closed tubes: one on the driver's side and two on the other side...(I know...I'm just Fulla Good News)
Then I heard something that I had not heard in a L O N G time...Tim, laughing hissef stupid... Literally with tears in his eyes... He said that Peggy's rear end came completely off the ground and the whole car went a little sideways on the ramp door. In the car...I was sitting on the front edge of the seat, leaning up so I could see both the front tire and the narrow ramp/extension ...upon the sudden stop of forward momentum, my wee, wittle chin whacked the steering wheel (and still hurts like the dickens). Tim's wife, Sharon, came runnin out the house, yelling "What Happened?? " (She had heard the four wheeler's engine rev and then a loud WHAM and thought she felt the house shake...) Then she was laughing as hard as Tim...I, on the other hand was rubbing my sore chin and thinkin..."well....Damn!"
Why izit...that when I am part of something really funny (or reaaaallly stupid) that there is never a video camera handy, focused and filming?? I never figured I would need my helmet and seatbelts just to load a dadgum racecar back in a trailer! Guess I need to check to see if my chin bent my steering wheel... sighhhh...Murphy Strikes again...