Sunday, July 6, 2014

Never underestimate the value of a nap in the problem-solving process

I bought this four-wheeler in 1995. That makes it about 19 years old.  After I had paid for it and loaded it into my truck, I walked into the dealer's shop area and asked for the manager. When he came over I told him I had just bought the four-wheeler, it was paid for and now I wanted an honest answer. What can go wrong with this machine, what breaks, what spare parts do you think I should carry?
The map shows waypoints recorded and transmitted from my SPOT locater.
Waypoint 1 at the right is the cabin and Waypoint 8 at left is the trail head.
That's the Talkeetna River winding across the top. Talkeetna is to the west
(left) past the edge of the map.

He looked at me and said, "Nothing, they always come back. Get a tire repair kit and you’re good." So far he's been right, I haven't even needed the tire-repair kit, but that run almost ended yesterday at least in my own mind.

Let me explain a little of the mechanics involved first. You can't start this four-wheeler if it is in gear. I imagine that's a safety feature on most of  them.  There are three indicator lights: one red if the engine oil is overheated, another red one tells you you are in reverse gear and one lights green if the machine is in neutral. That green light has to be on or the engine won't start. There is no other indicator to let you know what gear you are using. To shift gears there is a kick shifter, one down for reverse after you hold in a mechanical button and four up for forward gears. Occasionally if I leave it in reverse when I turn it off, it will be difficult to shift out of that gear to start it.

With that said, over the July 4 weekend at the East Pole, I pulled a heavy load of firewood up the hill to the cabin, some of what I left at the bottom in March. Next to the cabin I had to stop on a steep bit of trail, I was backing up, but had to stop and I locked in the parking brake and shut the machine off. Then I unloaded the firewood, unhitched the trailer and moved it out of the way and went to start the four-wheeler to set up for the next run down the hill.

No green light. I kept kicking the shifter upward and still no green light, I figured it might somehow be jammed tight against something and I tried to relieve that pressure by pushing it forward a little. Wouldn't budge; I’d try to kick the shifter up out of reverse but still no green light. The red reverse light wasn't on either but I couldn't remember if that came on when the engine wasn't running.

To keep this post at a reasonable length I'll tell you I wrestled with that machine for more than an hour, even involving the come-along using it to pull the machine into different positions on the hill to try to relieve that tension so I could start it. When I finally gave up it was 50 feet down the hill from the cabin and still silent. By that time I had been thinking of possibilities. In addition to a number of mechanical experiments I could have tried, I also started thinking about leaving it there and walking out to the trailhead, about seven miles of hilly, muddy trail and me not exactly in the best shape of my life. I wasn't going to do it in 2 hours and 20 minutes. I also realized I hadn't eaten in a while and maybe wasn't thinking clearly.

So, I left it and hiked up the cabin and made myself  a hamburger. Of course, what follows a filling lunch? A nap, of course. This is the Bush after all. I laid down for a while, hoping to sleep and maybe wake up with a solution. But there wasn't going to be any sleep; my mind just kept churning. On one side I was figuring out the logistics of hiking out, what I was going to have to leave there, how I could get the four-wheeler under the porch to protect it. The other half was thinking through the difficulty with the four-wheeler looking for an answer.

After maybe 20 minutes of no sleep and a lot of thought, I started thinking through reasons why that machine would not shift out of reverse. As I thought about it, all the shifting I had tried was up, up toward the forward gears. At times it felt like it had shifted but the green light did not come on and the machine wouldn't start. As I thought further, I realized when I had moved it downhill it had gone fairly easily, but kind of chugged with that sound an engine makes when the spark plugs aren't firing. Why would it go forward if it was in reverse? It occurred to me I had been so convinced the transmission was stuck in reverse, the idea it might be in another gear never even came to mind.

It slowly dawned on me that I might have been shifting it into forward gears and that's why it refused to start. My last thought before attempting to fall asleep was I should try downshifting one gear at a time and see if at one point the green light shined on.

Of course. with the simplest of all solutions burning in my brain I wasn't about to fall asleep any time soon. Eventually, giving up, I put on my clothes and boots and headed downhill. I kept thinking it can't be this simple. Still halfway planning my walk out, I sat in the seat and  carefully kicked the shifter down one. It felt like it had shifted gears, but no green light. I kicked it a second time and again it felt like it shifted but no green. I kicked it again, turned the key and, voila!  A green light. I hit the starter button and the engine fired right up. The darned thing had been in third gear, not reverse. I raised my arms and gave a victory shout to the fans watching from the woods. That was when the wave of stupid washed over me.

In a previous post, I mentioned one of the benefits of living alone in the Bush is when you make stupid mistakes no one has to know about it unless you want them to. This was one of those, but all in all it's pretty funny too, so, I can take the ribbing. I'm just glad I didn't have to test myself on that trail. Of course, there is some satisfaction in keeping the 19-year  performance record intact, despite the spates of pilot error.

Incidentally while I was out there, we had enjoyed three beautiful hot days. By hot, I mean you couldn't even hold onto the door knob for any length of time.  The next day, I drove out, loaded everything on the trailer and headed for home. A couple of miles on the highway and I stopped for a snack. When I emerged from the store, I felt the first drops of rain. I drove the rest of the way home in a downpour. If I had hiked, I figured I would have been about halfway along the trail to the trailhead when the rain started.  I'll take it. Plus now there is at least a winter's worth of firewood under the cabin. Only four more­ years to go.

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

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"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

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"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

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Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

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It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

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I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

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It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

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Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

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