A Winter Wonderland

You can have it.

People get all oogly googly when it starts to snow, it's so pretty.

Yeah, unless it doesn't fucking stop for two damn weeks.

It's 17 degrees outside, there is six inches of snow and a half inch of solid ice on top of that. The wind finally quit howling, it was shaking my trailer hard last night.

Not my idea of romantic, more like deadly serious shit if for some reason you have to be out in it, which I was yesterday.

My brother called me at ten in the morning, his truck wouldn't start at the joint he was singing Kareoke at the night before and wanted me to go pick him up and see if we could jump start it, by the way, it is a diesel with two batteries.

He has been having trouble with it for a couple of weeks and keeps taking it in to the fucking idiots who keep stroking him and not fixing the damn problem.


I got out the insulated coveralls and the rest of my winter gear and went and started The Beast and off I went. Of course, he lives on the side of a freaking mountain and there was snow all over the roads. I finally got there and collected him and took off back down the hill at a crawl in 4 wheel drive. Long story short, because it is the usual fucking nightmare scenario, I wound up under his truck replacing the starter and hauling him off to Napa for a new one.
Luckily, we were across the street from a bar, I could go in and thaw out my freezing hands.
I finally got the starter back in it at two thirty and it didn't work.

It wouldn't engage the flywheel. At this point, I am all done. Call the asshole who has been working on this thing and have him drag it in and fix it.

Oh no, my brother is going to pull it out and get another one, my cousin had showed up so he could haul his ass around. I leave him the tools, he saw me do it and now knows what to do, I go find a warm seat and play some poker.

He calls me up about an hour and a half later and the truck is running again.

He took that starter back to Napa and had it tested and it started working. He went back and put it in and away he went.

Go figure, I have no clue why that damn thing wouldn't engage after I put it in, I triple checked it!

I am here to tell you though, you know those guys that go out in ice storms and fix downed power lines?
They have huge balls.

I came home and I have stayed here since yesterday.
I just stuck my nose out of the Rat Hole and I am not going anywhere.

The forecast is for snow at least through Wednesday.

Getting to work tomorrow should be easy enough if the majority of the idiots stay home, they plow the main roads around here and The Beast works beautiful.

Best of luck to anyone else out there in this mess.

Ha! My brother just called me, his pipes are frozen.

I done been through that fun.

Stay warm y'all.