The Beast
I have survived another work week...
This week, in particular, was especially challenging.
All because of one thing. The Beast.
The Beast is our behemoth of a rig. An enormous, beat up, dented, Ford F-350. In Forest Service green, This truck is part of the summer fleet, a total wreck of metal that still manages to keep on running. Not only does it has a large crack splitting in two across the windshield, it has major dents on its sides (with some big chunks of paint missing), dents on the runner, serious dents on the tailgate with the back bumper slighty off-kilter and the right side passenger window is off its track, so it cannot go down. And that's just the outside. The inside features numerous holes in the seats with some of the springs popping out in the back. Black spraying patterns of some sort of liquid are splayed across the roof and the handle to pull down the back seat recently broke off.
Either the Beast is cursed or I am. The week in play:
Monday: we get a flat tire while we are up in the mountains surveying an area. Thankfully, we decided to break for lunch and come back to The Beast, where we discovered the flat tire at noon and not at 1600.
Tuesday: The Beast would not start; it was dead from me not remembering to turn off the lights from the previous day. Dead vehicle, so we are left with taking Beauty, our other vehicle. Beauty is a Jeep Liberty and fine to look at, but doesn't have any high clearance, which makes taking her up on the Forests roads just as challenging as taking the Beast.
Wednesday: The Doozie. After finishing up the survey area from Monday, we decide to take a short cut to our next survey area. This short cut is a road, which, according to our maps, is open (but doesn't mean it's a well-maintained road). Silly us, we think that, okay, it should be fine for getting to our next area. Well, it WAS fine, at first, but kept getting increasingly narrower as we got higher and higher. I had no choice but to continue on. Trees were getting closer and closer to the edge of the road, which made driving The Beast a little tricky since it's so big. Then we come to some trees on both sides of the road, with one on the right that was down, but cut. It was sticking up from the downslope, and this worried me because I didn't want it to hit the tires, so I edged closer to the left, thus ending up scraping the left passenger side door and damaging its handle. The damage was significant, although I didn't know how severe until I looked at it after I pushed the side-view mirror back in place. It got better. After that mishap, we came to a bend in the road that was thick with black mud. Lots of it. There was also a small turnout here, but thanks to a downed aspen, it blocked about half of its space. I knew that despite being in 4x4, I was going to get stuck in the mud anyway (it had happened to us before three seasons ago), so I decided to turn here. I edged as close to the mud as I could with my co-worker Brianna guiding me, but I started spinning the wheels anyway and wasn't going anywhere except closer and closer to the edge of the road! Thankfully, the drop-off here isn't very steep, but there's a drop-off nonetheless. With the tires spinning and mud flying, somehow I had managed to 'parallel park' in between two trees! I don't know how it happened but it happened. I couldn't believe it. But I truly believe I must have a spirit guide watching over me, because, after much turning, going forward and reversing, I finally managed to turn The Beast around without going over the road and downslope into some more trees. After that, we said the Hell with the short cut, and ended up taking the long way around. Sheesh. But the saving grace at the end of the day was coming across two young black bears on the closed road we were walking on. They couldn't have been no more than 15 ft. away from us! One was fully black, the other was light brown, almost blonde in color. We were almost to the end of the road and to our new survey area, but Brianna was a little unnerved about the bears and felt we should get back to the Beast at this point, which we did.
Thursday: NO mishaps, flat tires, or dead batteries! Whoo! Hoo! Another week and I survived! The Beast survived too. Time to enjoy the weekend now. :-)
This week, in particular, was especially challenging.
All because of one thing. The Beast.
The Beast is our behemoth of a rig. An enormous, beat up, dented, Ford F-350. In Forest Service green, This truck is part of the summer fleet, a total wreck of metal that still manages to keep on running. Not only does it has a large crack splitting in two across the windshield, it has major dents on its sides (with some big chunks of paint missing), dents on the runner, serious dents on the tailgate with the back bumper slighty off-kilter and the right side passenger window is off its track, so it cannot go down. And that's just the outside. The inside features numerous holes in the seats with some of the springs popping out in the back. Black spraying patterns of some sort of liquid are splayed across the roof and the handle to pull down the back seat recently broke off.
Either the Beast is cursed or I am. The week in play:
Monday: we get a flat tire while we are up in the mountains surveying an area. Thankfully, we decided to break for lunch and come back to The Beast, where we discovered the flat tire at noon and not at 1600.
Tuesday: The Beast would not start; it was dead from me not remembering to turn off the lights from the previous day. Dead vehicle, so we are left with taking Beauty, our other vehicle. Beauty is a Jeep Liberty and fine to look at, but doesn't have any high clearance, which makes taking her up on the Forests roads just as challenging as taking the Beast.
Wednesday: The Doozie. After finishing up the survey area from Monday, we decide to take a short cut to our next survey area. This short cut is a road, which, according to our maps, is open (but doesn't mean it's a well-maintained road). Silly us, we think that, okay, it should be fine for getting to our next area. Well, it WAS fine, at first, but kept getting increasingly narrower as we got higher and higher. I had no choice but to continue on. Trees were getting closer and closer to the edge of the road, which made driving The Beast a little tricky since it's so big. Then we come to some trees on both sides of the road, with one on the right that was down, but cut. It was sticking up from the downslope, and this worried me because I didn't want it to hit the tires, so I edged closer to the left, thus ending up scraping the left passenger side door and damaging its handle. The damage was significant, although I didn't know how severe until I looked at it after I pushed the side-view mirror back in place. It got better. After that mishap, we came to a bend in the road that was thick with black mud. Lots of it. There was also a small turnout here, but thanks to a downed aspen, it blocked about half of its space. I knew that despite being in 4x4, I was going to get stuck in the mud anyway (it had happened to us before three seasons ago), so I decided to turn here. I edged as close to the mud as I could with my co-worker Brianna guiding me, but I started spinning the wheels anyway and wasn't going anywhere except closer and closer to the edge of the road! Thankfully, the drop-off here isn't very steep, but there's a drop-off nonetheless. With the tires spinning and mud flying, somehow I had managed to 'parallel park' in between two trees! I don't know how it happened but it happened. I couldn't believe it. But I truly believe I must have a spirit guide watching over me, because, after much turning, going forward and reversing, I finally managed to turn The Beast around without going over the road and downslope into some more trees. After that, we said the Hell with the short cut, and ended up taking the long way around. Sheesh. But the saving grace at the end of the day was coming across two young black bears on the closed road we were walking on. They couldn't have been no more than 15 ft. away from us! One was fully black, the other was light brown, almost blonde in color. We were almost to the end of the road and to our new survey area, but Brianna was a little unnerved about the bears and felt we should get back to the Beast at this point, which we did.
Thursday: NO mishaps, flat tires, or dead batteries! Whoo! Hoo! Another week and I survived! The Beast survived too. Time to enjoy the weekend now. :-)