Winter afternoon musings.

[cleatus12r]

It's cold here. It's winter and the human body isn't designed for this type of stuff but we do what we do and where we do it because we love it. We learn to dress for it and we adapt. It's been in the low negative teens the last few days and we have two more days left this weekend that are supposed to be in the negative twenties. Good times!

Work has been sporadic lately - not "work" as in physical laboring because that's always there. I'm getting at what I do and the equipment I do it to. Over the past 6 years, my place of employment has purchased a lot of newer heavy trucks and equipment and we have started leasing brand new roadworking equipment (motorgraders) and loaders. With this comes a whole bunch of covered-under-warranty stuff and I don't get to touch it. With 10 of these pieces of equipment, I don't even get to service them at their scheduled intervals as the dealer comes out and does it. I've been able to take time off of work - something that over the last 9.5 years I have not been able to do because of my workload. It is kind of nice at this point in my life so I take advantage of it......

Lots of family time. That usually includes honey-dos and picking up the kid after school. There's now a bit of spare time Iof being able to provide low-cost repair services to local ranchers who have nobody to turn to these days. I bought a tire machine and balancer a couple years ago and am looking forward to installing a 2-post hoist sometime too but I am already battling for shop space.

I'm trying to burn a little time today since it is cold and I need to work on my wife's car when she gets home from work. I absolutely hate electronic throttle bodies because for some reason, they don't like to work when it's -15....the light grease in the geartrain is not so light when it's cold so codes set for a stuck throttle plate and all of a sudden the car is limited to 15 MPH and that is dangerous. Anyway, I replaced the throttle body 2.5 years ago and it's gone halfway through this winter with no problems....until yesterday. I am not one of those people who likes warranties because I'm cheap....but in this case, I lucked out on a 36 month warranty on a nearly $300 part. That's weird...I expected a failure at three days past 36 months.

Coolio.


I had a guy call me a few days ago about replacing injector cups in a 7.3 and I turned him away. I feel kind of guilty about it now but I made a promise to myself about that a while back....family and close friends ONLY. Oh, and the engine's coming out to do them. They are soooo finicky and such a pain to get the bores clean that I just refuse to fight them anymore. Besides, there aren't many 7.3s out there anymore that don't leak from somewhere that is just easier (or the only way possible) to fix with the engine out. In addition, around here, there aren't many of these vehicles that haven't spent some amount of time in the weeds so pulling the radiator and charge air cooler to clean them out isn't a bad idea.

Sorry about going on about nothing....I'm just bored.
I still get excited about tuning and helping with those concerns although the traffic here isn't really rockin' so I interject on FTE a lot. I figure that I know just enough to be dangerous when it comes to diagnosing and walking people through the Hydra process. That technology is pretty incredible and really easy to use. FTE has a pretty decent community over there and I find it hard to believe that I have a .94 posts-per-day average after 16 years and 9 months. Maybe I should check over here...but I don't know if it's a fair comparison as this place has been down a couple times and I was kind of involved with it through the business at one point. Over there I just get to run my mouth (figuratively speaking).

I might go on a bit later but for now I get to copy and paste this since I'm surely timed-out on my login by now. Have a good weekend, guys.

[cleatus12r]

Late night for the wife.

I've been reading through old posts. Man, I feel old after reading some of these 8-9 year old posts. I ain't any smarter neither!

[Longshot270]

Dude, your weather is down here causing all kinds of trouble. Lol

[Power Hungry]

Originally Posted by cleatus12r

Late night for the wife.

I've been reading through old posts. Man, I feel old after reading some of these 8-9 year old posts. I ain't any smarter neither!

You're killing me, Cody!

[cleatus12r]

Originally Posted by Longshot270

Dude, your weather is down here causing all kinds of trouble. Lol

Your people MOVING UP HERE are causing all sorts of trouble!

[cleatus12r]

More musing:

Injuries. Have you had any life-altering ones? Been close? Recovered ok?

I had been a pretty lucky kid and teenager. I had a few close calls but had never hurt myself badly or broken any bones. I didn't play sports though so that probably helped. It's tough to sprain anything or break bones playing a trumpet in pep band.

I was on leave at home Thanksgiving of 1997 when I hurt myself really bad for the first time. I was out riding 4-wheelers (remember those?) with my brother and friend Eric when my brother wrecked pretty hard. The 4-wheeler was on top of him and the rack on the back had landed on his head/neck. I ran down the hill and literally threw the machine off of him and in the process I ended up bending my knee backwards while high on adrenaline. It swelled up over the next day or so to the size of a large grapefruit. I put on a knee brace and hopped around for the next week on the other leg and then drove all the way back to Louisiana. Two days later I was able to run, jump, etc. like I had been able to do before the injury EXCEPT stand and twist on it.

I really had no idea what I did to it for the next 21 years and I just kept it in the back of my mind that I had to favor it. I have re-injured it twice in the last 23 years - once in the summer of 2014 and once on December 7, 2017. The first time was while trying to pack a charged, spraying 1.5" firehose up the side of a hill. Ah, that feeling....CRUNCH! BRIGHT LIGHT! Wake up on ground. Two days of a brace and I was back to normal. The last time three years ago I was walking across the work parking lot and the puddles in the asphalt lot had frozen and there was a nice 1/2" layer of fresh powder hiding them. My right heel hit one of the ice spots and again, the same sequence of events. I went back to work after about an hour of icing it.

I decided to FINALLY have the thing checked out as I've ALWAYS been afraid of finding out bad news......Torn ACL. Oh, that's common and it can be fixed. However, after exploring options of how/where my own tendon material would be harvested for the repair or the risks of installing cadaver pieces and the chances of rejection, I decided that I wouldn't bother getting the surgery. I make my living kneeling on concrete and that would pretty much be over for me if I had the surgeon use kneecap tendon. I also USE my hamstrings often and I didn't want to lose ANY strength there. I'll wait another 10-15 years and think about getting it fixed then.

The last big one was ALSO on December 7th...of 2020. I was doing the same thing I've done for years: Lifting truck tires onto a pickup flatbed. It caught up to me this time - big time. I made the last lift at about 10AM and didn't feel anything out of the ordinary until about 8PM. My gut and abdominal muscles felt weird - I thought I gave myself a hernia. The following morning I drove myself to the hospital and checked into the ER. CT scans showed nothing out of the ordinary - no ruptures. Well.....ok. The "doctor" said, "Oh, you may have gastritis." Here's a prescription for Pepcid. Um....Ok. Did you not hear anything I said about what happened and how I feel?

Long story short, I made 5 trips to the ER in eight days. I saw 5 different "doctors" and had an ultrasound and nine x-rays. I've been fortunate to be an extraordinarily "regular" guy ever since I can remember but I was unable to have a bowel movement for 15 days . Every time I would go to the hospital, it was, "You have gas.", "You're constipated.", "Take laxatives.", "Take Pepto Bismol." I heard from every one of them that there was nothing wrong with me even though I explained to each in very high detail what had happened, how it happened, and that there had been food going in my mouth but after all of the laxatives there was nothing in my colon. I lost 14 lbs. in 2 weeks because I was afraid to eat. I couldn't stop drinking water - I couldn't seem to get enough. Magnesium Citrate and suppositories DID NOTHING. The symptoms were only the feeling of discomfort in my gut (like pressure) but no real pain and I could not flex my abdominal muscles.

On the 10th day I took all of my vehicle titles in and had them notarized (easier for the vehicles to disappear). I made sure all of my life insurance paperwork was in order, and I called my friends to let them know that I was planning.

After the 14th day, I had an emotional breakdown. I was convinced that I was going to die because I started feeling nauseous on and off. I cried on my wife's shoulder for quite a while. That night, I went to bed and I felt a pain in the middle of my back that I'd never felt before. Just below my shoulder blades, centered in the spine. My wife, who sees a highly-respected massage therapist every month for her back made me an appointment for the following evening.

I had never been to a person who practices the massage/bone cracking bit but I know this woman. She has been working on my wife for a couple years and my dad a few more than that. She asked me what was going on, what happened, and what I was feeling. She turned me around, felt my spine and convinced me that she was going to fix me right up. She worked on me for about 20 minutes and then went in for the kill. She popped the first vertebrae and I could instantly feel my abdominal muscles come back to life. Then she hit the second one and said that I would start getting back to normal (in the gut function deparment) the next day. She was right. The next day at about noon I was "going" and have been ever since.

I still am not "right" though. Sneezing, coughing, or even hiccups and laughter hurt - as though I have no muscle action holding up my guts above my pelvis. I've gone back to the therapist and my back doesn't hurt, but something still isn't right. I can barely lift 25 lbs. without it hurting my abdomen directly above and below my navel, and oftentimes I get the "kicked in the groin" feeling into my left lower gut shortly after. I can't sing in the car (if you can call the music I like "singing") anymore either.

After this charade, I have no faith in doctors. None of them listened to what I said and instantly went to the stomach acid/constipation/gas as my problem when in actuality it was pinched nerves in my spine. They would have killed me had I waited any longer, I'm certain. I got referrals to the gastroenterologist and an appointment to get another ultrasound but I never went and I'm not going to. The worker compensation office only paid a couple of the bills because "nothing the doctor wrote in his notes had any relation to a muscle strain or hernia". Thanks. I've been self-aware of my body and how it functions for 40 years and I have these problems all of a sudden AFTER I hurt myself lifting. No, not related at all. I never took any time off work short of a few hours of sick time here and there to lay down and relax.

Short of that, I still hit my head a lot on things and I still lose a lot of skin (mechanic trait of shedding more skin than a snake). I've been lucky so far with other things. I guess a few years ago I DID actually finally break a bone. In a freak accident, I broke a rib. I don't know how I'd explain the how/why of what happened, but it occurred during some fencepost hole digging with a tractor. It screwed me up a little bit for about 2 months but I came out of it just fine although I can see where the bone healed a little bit off if I stand in the mirror in the right light.

I also fell on some concrete (tripped) about 6 years ago and landed on that pointy bone on the end of my left elbow. It's not pointy anymore.

Man, what a BOOK!

Sorry, still bored. My wife is doing Girl Scout stuff (my stepdaughter is selling cookies tomorrow) and I'm waiting to put the last few logs on the fire before hitting the sack.

Take care!

[cleatus12r]

Morning thoughts.....

DAMN!
We should only have one more day of this and then the highs for next week will be 60 degrees warmer!

[Power Hungry]

Originally Posted by cleatus12r

Morning thoughts.....

DAMN!
We should only have one more day of this and then the highs for next week will be 60 degrees warmer!

Holy crap, dude! And I'm sitting here complaining about the same temp on the + side of the scale.

As for the injury side of things... I've been pretty fortunate, I guess. A few stupid things aside, I suppose I've come out okay.

Born with a double hernia, I made it to almost 30 before I finally had to get them fixed. One in 1997 and one in 2004. The first surgery I could barely move for almost two weeks while the second surgery had me up the next day and back at work. The other consequence of the first surgery is that they apparently cut a nerve that runs down the inside of my left leg, so I have minimal feeling on the inside of my leg from my groin to my knee. The leg works fine, so I just deal with it. Just glad it wasn't a few more inches to the right.

2 dirtbike accidents (one in 2005 and another in 2006) both had interesting outcomes.

The first one left me with 2 fractured ankles after coming up short on a double jump and casing the bike. Thank goodness for extremely stiff riding boots or my ankles would have been completely buggered. As it was, I could barely walk correctly for almost 3 months, and couldn't roll my ankles outwards for nearly 2 years.

The second one had me come off my bike head first from about 12 feet in the air when my back tire caught a jump wrong and the bike mule kicked me off. Basically I took a nosedive into the dirt, getting a concussion in the process. Also, because I extended my arms as I was travelling towards the ground (picture a diving position), I ended up tearing the muscles in between several of the ribs on my left side. This actually may have saved me from breaking my neck, but it hurt like hell when recovering. It took almost 6 months for that to heal up, but I'm glad I'm still alive to talk about it.

Another dirtbike injury in 2010 had me hyperextending my right shoulder and tearing my rotator cuff. After avoiding that surgery for several years, I finally had that fixed and everything works great.

I still seem to refuse to accept the fact that in my 50's. I don't generally have many physical ailments that restrict me from doing things, I just have to remember that while I may party like a 25 year old rock star, I don't recover like one. In some situations it may take me a couple days to get over moving some furniture or working on a truck.

As I say, I've been pretty fortunate in the physical department. My eyes have gone to crap, but the body is still holding up alright and there's very little I can't do. I just have to use a little more care when doing certain things, particularly heavy lifting. It's not that I can't lift something, it's just that 2 days later I regret it.

This getting old business is for the birds. I'm glad there are people like Jack that show we can still be plugging away in our senior days.

[cleatus12r]

There's a reason dirtbiking looks fun but I will never do it. I've seen way too many Youtube videos of people hurting themselves doing that and skateboarding. No thanks!


When my dad retired 10 years ago (FINALLY), he had his back and both rotator cuffs done in the first 3 years. I'm a lot like my dad in a few ways; we both kind of ignore stuff and then just keep working as usual once we feel like we can because we can't sit still and do nothing. He didn't do any physical therapy and as soon as he spent a few days doing nothing in his chair with the ice water pump thing on his shoulders he was back to normal stuff....fencing (driving posts manually and dragging elk around and gutting them for people).

I hope that I am still able to do what he does to this day at age 74 when I get up there. He's no longer the invincible Superman that I used to know but he can still outwork most every 50-something I've met and he leaves those young "kids" on the fire department in awe when he starts doing stuff.

Like you, I don't really "feel my age" and most days I don't feel much different than I did in my early 30's other than the changes that come with a wife that loves to cook and is very good at it....well....I don't look the same. I CAN finally grow some facial hair though. That started about the time the metabolism changed at 37.

[Jackpine]

Originally Posted by Power Hungry

...<snip>...
This getting old business is for the birds. I'm glad there are people like Jack that show we can still be plugging away in our senior days.

Yep, old as dirt. Was 80 last January. I've heard that "quality lasts"?

Still able to to most physical tasks. Been helping my contractor on a deck rebuild at my house, mostly doing simple things like painting and helping to carry big heavy things like 16 ft deck planks.

But, speaking of hernias, in the past 4 years I've had to have 4 hernias repaired! Guess I have a flimsy gut. Thankfully, all repairs went well and I was only laid up about one day each time, but two of them were emergency surgeries and I was in bad shape when I went to the emergency room.

I still hike when I get the chance. A couple months ago went on an 8 mile hike, climbing about 1200 ft in the mountains where I now live. I think the "key" is to stay active.

Got my first Covid-19 shot two weeks ago. No reaction to speak of, except for a very slightly stiff feeling arm. It was the Moderna vaccine.

- Jack