Weithy is Married to Lacey

It has been snowing since yesterday morning.  It dumped 21 inches in 24 hours at my house.  We must have 2 feet by now… in hardly over a day.  It’s nuts.

Tessa and Logan, Lacey’s sister and brother, have been staying with us since last Thursday.  Totally fun (but beside the point).  Tessa was supposed to fly out this morning and of course the airlines give no indication that anything will be cancelled until you drive all the way to the airport, check in your bag, and start walking to your terminal.  At least that was Tessa’s experience.  Lacey and I were almost back to our house when she called us with the news.  So we turned around (grabbed some Starbucks first) and headed back to the airport.

 

I love driving my big blue truck in the snow.  It’s amazing in the snow… invincible.  Well, almost.  On the way back from the airport, about two blocks from our house, I decided to take them on a little alley tour for funsies.  Unfortunately, as we came to the cross street I slowed down to check for traffic and sunk down into the berm right before the street.  Doh!  The best part was that I had literally just finished reassuring Lacey that we couldn’t get stuck in the big blue snowbeast.  After an hour of digging out the tires repeatedly and making progress little by little, a guy stopped and helped me realize I wasn’t using the hub-locks quite right for the four-wheel drive.  I thought you had to lock the hubs after you got it in four-wheel drive.  I had taken it out of 4-High to put it in 4-Low, and had unlocked the hubs in the process.  My thinking was that I then needed to get the truck in 4-Low before locking the hubs.  Wrong.  I was informed that you leave the hubs locked and just move the shifter.  So anyway, once we locked the hubs I went right into 4-Low and drove right off, as I knew I would.  I simply couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t going into four wheel drive!  But I had a lot of fun digging myself out of my neighborhood offroading, it felt like the good times I had with Jeremiah and Becky last winter getting their Jeep out of Rocks of Sharon, a place outside of Spokane we went snowshoeing.  The difference is we had tow ropes and we were in the backcountry, not a city street…  But honestly it kinda feels like the backcountry out there today… I saw someone cross-country skiing down the alley just a few minutes ago so…

In and around 2 months in the past of now, I decided I needed a truck.  In these days of Hollywood green and sell-your-body-parts gas prices, I think I better justify my decision.  Oh, it’s a 1976 Ford F250 Highboy with 35″ tires and a 200-pound solid steel rear bumper.

Reason #1:  Hauling crap.  I have two trees, a maple and a pine of some sort, which were attempting to pounce on the roof of my house.  I interceded for my helpless house and purchased one of those long pruner poles (with a gnarly saw blade on the end) to karate chop the trees’s tushys.  After the slaughter I looked at the large piles of severed limbs and realized they probably wouldn’t fit in my 2-door Honda Accord (if only I had the 4-door).

Reason #2:  Hauling supplies.  Along with the two trees, I have a roof on my house, a fireplace chimney on the roof of my house, and a garage attic, all requiring a ladder to safely reach them.  Even though I’d gotten that long tree pruner, I still needed to get on the roof to reach some of the branches threatening my house.  The previous owner left me a chimney sweep so I wanted to try that out.  And I wanted to check out the garage attic to see what anti-treasures might be lurking up there.  (When I pulled down the creepy dirty old baby car seat, I discovered a giant hornet’s nest the size of a giant hornet’s nest).  Well, the ladder actually fit just fine in my car but I had to red flag the end and ask the Lowe’s checkout girl what the legal limit out the back is, which was awkward because I get supernervous talking to girls, which she promptly told me 2 feet, which I then diverted my eyes to the floor, which she only knew the legal limit because she looked it up for someone earlier that day, which I was relieved to go do the flag thing that color-matched my rosy cheeks and run away from girl.  But when I buy a kitchen floor there’s NO WAY I’ll fit that in my car because my kitchen is maybe like 20′ x 30′ and my car only like 10′ x 6′, but then again my truck is only like 16′ x 6.5′ so I don’t know what I’m gonna do…wait I’m being told kitchen floors don’t come in one piece?

Reason #3:  Adventure.  How else am I supposed to get into the mountains for backpacking, rock climbing, backcountry skiing, offroading, and other various and sundry excursions?  I wanted a canopy so I can build a platform to sleep in the back with my gear underneath, just like Shane and his followers!

Reason #4:  Chicks.  Chicks love guys with big trucks and bigger egos.  I’ve been wondering what I was missing all these years and realized it was the big truck.

Reason #5:  Increase my carbon footprint and destroy the atmosphere.  My carbon footprint is barely 9 tons of CO2 per year and the U.S. national average is 18.58 tons so I’m way behind!

I’m plumb out of reasons but I think it’s totally justified.  Besides, it’s just a really sweet yet mean truck.  I started cleaning up the engine (390 FE) to prep it for some high performance additions so watch for the update…