Being All In. Or, All Under a Truck

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I almost made it home early one morning without encountering a car. Two passed me when I got back to my midtown location. Dodge Flower! Pull it up for your hood! Ah, never mind. I took Lance out for a walk and heard a birdsong in the cool of the night that made me consider staying here. It was beautiful. Had me stopped and listening for some time. At least 30 different melodies from one lone bird. Everything else quiet.

Recently got into round table poker, and recently acquired a set of orders to maintenance camp, and in a hard way.

I bought an ’85 Ford truck thinking I won, but no. This is to be my family’s plow truck, if I can get it back East – but I got screwed by the owner who drove the piss out of it, never maintained anything, and dumped it on the market. I was already struggling. Now I have to put aside everything in my life to do some ‘easy’ things:

Rear end is bad.
Overheats, even after I changed thermostat.
Fuel pissing out of 2 injectors.
Just changed the valve cover gaskets on the 6.9L.

You never want to do this. Pure hell. Changing the rear end will be easier. I just picked one up and the Ford barely made it. Overheating like hell. Diesel boiling on the manifold.

Almost recreationally, I took care of the problems I knew it had when I handed over 15 hunderts for it. Tie rod end – took 4 days to find but was easy to do. 2 out of six LT tires – good now. Front Michelins. Gas tank filler tubess – fixed them. Destroyed the old wood bed and put in some nice planks of fir. And pulled one hub to replace an e-brake cable. It was hard work, but didn’t destroy me like trying to get at the bolts under this:

So I’m all in. I’m stuck with a big project on top of a big project I’m supposed to be doing.

It’s such an idiotic configuration, and so tight, that even after I got the last bolt out (took hours, and it destroyed my hands) the cover STILL WON’T COME OFF! I tried for hours. Next day, I thought to pry the engine over with a steel bar 1/4″ and it worked. Then I got to put it back on, after scrubbing it.

Digging holes is like having sex compared to this work. You have to sit up on the engine, leaning in.

The weather does get exciting at times. I took these photos on my way East with a wicked side tailwind. The dust blowing was intense:

On Saturday it rained heavily and it was cold. Massive puddles of filthy water on Grant. Went way south on Dodge and to a rare poker tournament. It was a blast – and I learned a lot. Most fun for $12 ever. The last two players at the table included the champion from two years prior, and he was last to be all in. He could have won but did not have a high enough stack. It proved to me that poker is a more than 50% a game of skill. And, likewise, so is life. Every hand is a losing hand. You gotta be in to win.

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