Friday, February 8, 2019

A mechanical failure is for the birds



No one should ever call me a mechanic. I mean, I can do routine maintenance, and small things,
like change spark plugs if necessary. But don't ever ask me to run the rack on a diesel injection system, or rebuild a carburetor or change a transmission. That just won't happen. And troubleshooting? I can come up with a hundred theories if something breaks down, but seldom the right one. I am guy who swore at his brand new snowmachine for a week when it wouldn't run, only to discover after I had called for help that I had left the parking brake engaged.

     We all know the mechanic you tell about a small noise you heard and he immediately goes to worst case: "we'll probably have to pull the engine, might take a total rebuild." Then someone finds a screw loose, tightens it and all fixed.
    I'm a worst-case guy. Something goes wrong I immediately imagine the worst. Only I don't tear down the engine, I want to call the guy.
   When something breaks out here at the East Pole even calling the guy is a chore and getting the machine to the mechanic is near impossible.
    With that said, two days ago, faced with an impending disaster, I had to go out.
    I went out to start the snowmachine. It fired up once and quit. On the second try it attempted to go but failed. On the third try it only gave me that horrid electronic click. If you've ever had a totally dead battery you've heard that click. Now, this machine's battery has never gone dead even after a whole summer of lay up. There is a manual start, a pull cord like a lawnmower. That proved to be locked up, and could not be pulled. So, not the battery, something mechanical was jammed.
    I tried pulling the machine a few feet hoping to turn the track and free whatever had locked up, but no luck. Thinking it might still be the battery, I hooked up a charger and went indoors to think and read the manual.
    Between the two I realized I had not looked at the side of the engine where the flywheel, drive belt, drive wheel and other moving parts are located.
    I removed that panel and looked through the assembly, but didn't see a tree branch or errant screw jammed in anywhere. But I did see a large nut on the assembly for the lower of two pulleys that together transfer the action of the drive belt to the track. I picked up a wrench to fit and gently but firmly tried to turn the nut. Immediatly I heard a metallic click and looked quickly enough to see a shaft and small cog wheel withdraw from the lower pulley and retreat into the housing for the shaft that rotates the track. Whoa, that had to be it. I sat back and thought about it for a minute. Then I gave the recoil starter cord a gentle tug and woo hoo it was free. A minute later I used the elctric start and the machine fired right off. But O.M.G.
     The engine caught but immediately raced to full rpms; almost getting away from me and diving over the edge and down the hill. I managed to hit the kill switch to stop it. That happened again and then somehow in reverse and it backed up until it dug itself a hole. In one of those starts there was a huge backfire as well.
    So back indoors again. The book said bad plugs can cause backfires and then I noticed something in the startup procedure; you're supposed to operate the throttle lever several times before you start then engine. Long story short, new plugs and squeezing the throttle lever several times and the machine started properly, ran the way it was supposed to and engaged the track and I could drive it away.
     By that time it was too late in the day to start a major trip out the trail and a short shopping run. Despite not getting the job done, I felt pretty good about the day. I left everything there feeling proud of myself, but slightly fearful I would encounter another problem when I started up the next day. Still, a day with a major mechanical success is always a good day.
     The next morning everything ran perfectly. I went out, hit the gas station and the grocery store and made it back home in good time, and, with that major catastrophe averted.
    And what was that catastrophe that caused this monumental effort? I managed to run out of seed for the bird feeder. I had left a 40-pound bag in the truck and had to retrieve it. You just don't want to piss off an army of chickadees and redpolls.
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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

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

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

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"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

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

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

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

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

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

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

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

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

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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”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

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"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

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This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

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Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

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