How Did I Get Here?

Friday

Gather around people, I have something to say.

Ready?

I’m keeping Truckasaurus.

(wait for the applause and gasps to die down)

I know, I know but it’s a decision I made recently. I just can’t part with Truckasaurus. We’ve been through too much and I just can’t let him go.

So I took him to a friend of my neighbor Skip and had some work done. He now has new shocks in the back and new stuff (pardon the technical jargon) in the front to make the wheels, you know, stay on. They also fixed that annoying spraying of steering fluid so now I can steer. So that’s good.

I want to get a paint job done on it but Carrie is totally against it. The paint is peeling and putting wax on it now is like slapping a coat of paint on the Titanic.

I want to be that cool guy who has the “old” truck in mint condition. I want the paint job to look new (or at least not embarrassing) and the interior cue-tip clean. I want sparkling windows and shiny wheels. I want Truckasaurus restored to his original studliness.

After we got the front redone, the guy said we needed to get it aligned. It had been awhile (years) since we got it aligned and I can’t remember the last time we got the tires rotated. So I took it into the Firestone shop near where I work and they talked me into the lifetime alignment for $135. I figured what they wanted me to figure: if I get it aligned twice, it will pay for itself (a single alignment was going to run about $65) but the difference here is that I WILL use it more than twice if only for the fact that I will want to eek out as much as I can out of the “lifetime alignment” I paid for.

Before I took it in (but AFTER I had the work done) to get aligned, the sterring was all sloppy and when I veered onto the center line, the tires squealed like a piggy. I thought this was strange; why would the tires squeal depending on the surface when driving down the road at a constant speed?

I chalked the steering up to me being used to the lack of power steering and the squealing to needing an alignment. After spending hundreds of dollars, I was not too happy about this. It seemed WORSE than before.

But I took it in and got in aligned and when I drove Trucky home, the steering was wonderful and no more squealing. There we go, Truckasaurus was back in the game and ready to get back to work. I KNEW I made the right decision and am glad me and Truckasaurus are once again like peas and carrots.

BTW, when I get to California, I’ll need a new license plate and I don’t know if they will let me have “PVT2CPT” or if they will say it’s already taken (yeah, by ME a few years ago but will they care?).

So Carrie and I were trying to come up with 7 letters to name Triple T. We were thinking either TRKSRUS or TRUCKEE.

What do you think?

Free Advice for Today: “Pass down family recipes.”