Thursday, February 22, 2007

Staying occupied

Cold/flu: My Bitch

All this with a cold/failed flu. A bug's been going around, but I don't seem to have had any problems beyond minor sniffles and an annoying sore throat. I'm glad I have antibodies with balls.

The weather has warmed up, topping out at 80 degrees today, so I got in a ten-mile paddle on Big Creek Lake. This time I went north, wending my way between submerged tree-trunks and stumps all the way up to highway 98. Once again, no photography, but here's the map:

On a side note, it was warm enough to go shirt-less and PFD-less, so I might just be the first damn fool in this county to get a sunburn in February. I've also stopped paddling with gloves for the last three weeks. The longer my trips get, the thicker my calluses get. I've also been putting in more than the usual amount of car maintenance. In passing, I brought up the subject of a borrowed Jaguar last week. It's been the subject of constant maintenance attention.

I've troubleshot the squirrelly tail-lights (traced to the headlight switch and fixed); added 4 quarts of oil to the engine (my uncle, the car's owner, has a habit of ignoring his cars' oil quantities); and I've also washed, waxed, cleaned, and generally undone the mortal sin of leaving a car in a driveway uncovered for months on end. Now that most of the bugs are worked out, I'm driving a decent car with a fine engine and 52,000 miles in the odometer, nice and low for its age. It's a very nice stopgap.

5 comments:

kissyface said...

Oh, you and your immuno-boasts! Hubris!

Citizen H said...

Well, in the words of Chuck Yeager, "It ain't bragging if you can do it."

Mheh.

Anonymous said...

I too have found that when sick with a cold, the best way to get rid of it is to sweat it out.

bulletholes said...

Worse sunburn I ever got was in February--8 hours on the water on a clear day after being holed up all Winter- I was askin' for it!

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, here's a HL switch story for ya'...
The Car: 1968 Dodge Polara Wagon, 283 ci., 2 bbl., auto, air, pwr. wind. Had been Grandma's lux ride before other family duties and coming to me. Good accel. in straight line.
The place/time: Salem, MA, 1978
The Problem: Flaky headlights. I'd noticed the problem, spent an hour with a buddy wiggling, disassembling etc. Having replaced the alternator and cleaned and checked battery not long before, soon diagnosed switch. Buy new one, but old one seems to be better hanging below dash, and have to make Holiday run home soonest. Installation can wait - get by.

Scene: I-95 S., somewhere in RI. The flakies are back, it's getting too dangerous on the long flat fast stretches... I pull over to change the part... flahsers on (i'd rather be shocked than hit) and screw my 6'5" body around, head under dashboard, feet up on seatback. I've got a small flashlight and I'm doing OK (well, there's like six leads on the thing) when all of a sudden there's this BLINDING flash and a very commanding voice asks "What the H**l are you doing there, fellow?"
I snap like a shrimp, put a small cut and big dent in my forehead, and my feet put a 4" rip in the headliner.
"Oh s**t... RIHP... the most feared folks on the Coast!"
(Rhode Island being so small and all, yet controlling the fastest sections of the I-95 corridor would mercilessly prosucute and fine out-of-state drivers in a wink. Or for winking. They needed the money.)
Now I'me looking up, with my head on the driver's floor, at this immense silluouette with a giant Smokey Bear hat.
"Uh, replacing, Blip, uh safety, uhm, (swallow) uhm, papers?
While I sweated out the rest of my repair (and maybe a few extra minutes, just to instill the fear of the RIHP in me) he returned to my car, said he'd seen my lights were now steady and bid me proceed.

Moral of the story: That was the most spooked I've ever been by a human being in my life. I mean I could have heard his car pull in ahead of me if I'd had my ears open, right? If this had been a man who meant me harm, I was a goner.

Second moral of the story: Maintain your vehicle. Take care of that little stuff before and extended trip. Heck, a couple of months back I helped wire together some poor devil's wiper blades.

Sorry for the length, but sometimes my mad writing skillz just overcome me...